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A 


HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


IN  EPITOME, 


BY 

DE.  ALBEET  SCHWEGLEE. 


TRANSLATED  FROM  TEE  ORIGINAL  GERMAN, 

BY 

JULIUS  H.  SEELYE. 


FIFTH  EDITION. 


KEW  YORK: 
D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY, 

443  &  445  BROADWAY. 
LONDON:  16  LITTLE  BRITAIN. 
1866. 


4 


EiTTEEED,  according  to  act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1856, 
By  Julius  H.  Seelte, 
In  the  Clerk's  Oflace  of  the  District  Court  of  the  TJnited  States  for  the 
Northern  District  of  New  York. 


m. 


INTKODUCTOEY  NOTE 

BY  HENBY  B.  SMITH.  D.  D. 


The  History  of  Philosophy,  by  Dr.  Albert  Schwegler,  is 
considered  in  Germany  as  the  best  concise  manual  upon 
the  subject  from  the  school  of  Hegel.  Its  accoimt  of  the 
Greek  and  of  the  German  systems,  is  of  especial  value 
and  importance.  It  presents  the  whole  history  of  specu- 
lation in  its  consecutive  order.  Though  following  the 
method  of  Hegel's  more  extended  lectures  upon  the  pro- 
gress of  philosophy,  and  though  it  makes  the  system  of 
Hegel  to  be  the  ripest  product  of  philosophy,  yet  it  also 
rests  upon  independent  investigations.  It  will  well  re- 
ward diligent  study,  and  is  one  of  the  best  works  for  a 


IV  INTRODUCTORY  NOTE. 

text-book  in  our  colleges,  upon  this  neglected  branch  of 
scientific  investigation.  The  translation  is  made  by  a 
competent  person,  and  gives,  I  doubt  not,  a  faithful  ren 
dering  of  the  original. 

Henet  B.  Smith. 

Union  TnEOLoaicAii  Sesiinary,  New  York,  Nov.  6,  1855. 


TRANSLATOE'S 


PEEFACE. 


Schwegler's  History  of  Philosophy  originally  appeared  in 
the  Neue  EncyMojpadiefuT  Wissenscliaftenund KunsteP 
Its  great  value  soon  awakened  a  call  for  its  separate  issue, 
in  which  form  it  has  attained  a  very  wide  circulation  in 
Germany.  It  is  found  in  the  hands  of  almost  every  stu- 
dent in  the  philosophical  department  of  a  German  uni- 
versity, and  is  highly  esteemed  for  its  clearness,  concise- 
ness, and  comprehensiveness. 

The  present  translation  was  commenced  in  Germany 
three  years  ago,  and  has  been  carefully  finished.  It  was 
undertaken  with  the  conviction  that  the  work  would  not 
lose  its  interest  or  its  value  in  an  English  dress,  and  with 

the  hope  that  it  might  be  of  wider  service  in  such  a  form 
1 


vi 


translator's  preface. 


to  students  of  philosophy  here.  It  was  thought  espe- 
cially, that  a  proper  translation  of  this  manual  would 
supply  a  want  for  a  suitable  text-book  on  this  branch  of 
study,  long  felt  by  both  teachers  and  students  in  our 
American  colleges. 

The  effort  has  been  made  to  translate,  and  not  to  para- 
phrase the  author's  meaning.  Many  of  his  statements 
might  have  been  amplified  without  diffuseness,  and  made 
more  perceptible  to  the  superficial  reader  without  losing 
their  interest  to  the  more  profound  student,  but  he  has  so 
happily  seized  upon  the  germs  of  the  different  systems, 
that  they  neither  need,  nor  would  be  improved  by  any 
farther  development,  and  has,  moreover,  presented  them 
so  clearly,  that  no  student  need  have  any.  difficulty  in  ap- 
prehending them  as  they  are.  The  translator  has  there- 
fore endeavored  to  represent  faithfully  and  clearly  the 
original  history.  As  such,  he  offers  his  work  to  the 
American  public,  indulging  no  hope,  and  making  no  ef- 
forts for  its  success  beyond  that  which  its  own  merits 
shall  ensure.  J.  H.  S. 

Schenectady,  N.  Y.,  January^  1856. 


CONTENTS. 


PAOK 

INTRODUCTORY  NOTE,  by  Hexrt  B.  Smith,  D.  D.      .        .        .  iii 

TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE   v 

TABLE  OF  CONTENTS   vii 

Skctiok  L— what  is  meant  BY  THE  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY       .  11 

II.— CLASSIFICATION   16 

IIL— GENERAL 'VIEW  OF  THE  PRE-SOCRATIO  PHILOSOPHY      .  17 

1.  The  Ionics      ........  17 

2.  The  Pythagoreans         .......  18 

3.  The  Eleatics   18 

4.  Heraclitus          ........  18 

5.  The  Atomists  ,  19 

6.  Anasagoras         ........  19 

7.  The  Sophists            .......  20 

IV.— THE  IONIC  PHILOSOPHERS     .        .        ....  21 

1.  Thales   21 

2.  Anaximander      ........  22 

3.  Anaximenes  23 

4.  Retrospect  23 

V.-PYTHAGOREANISM   23 

1.  Its  Relative  Position      .......  23 

2.  Historical  and  Chronological          .....  23 

3.  The  Pythagorean  Principle       ......  24 

4.  Carrying  out  of  this  Principle        .....  25 

VI.— THE  ELEATICS   27 

1.  The  Relation  of  the  Eleatic  Principle  to  the  Pythagorean        .  27 

2.  Xenophanes        ........  28 

8.  Parmenides     ........  28 

4.  Zeno        .........  80 


viii 


CONTENTS. 


PAGB 

Sect.  VIL— HERACLITUS   31 

1.  Eelatlon  of  the  Heraclitic  Principle  to  the  Eleatlc     .         .  81 

2.  Historical  and  Chronological  .  .  .  .  ,  82 
8.  The  Principle  of  the  Becoming           .....  32 

4.  The  Principle  of  Fire         ......  33 

5.  Transition  to  the  Ato mists       ......  83 

VIII— EMPEDOCLES   35 

1.  General  View      ........  85 

2.  The  Four  Elements   ......  85 

3.  The  Two  Powers          .......  36 

4.  Eelation  of  the  Empedoclean  to  the  Eleatlc  and  Heraclitic  Philo- 

sophy        ........  36 

IX.— THE  ATOMISTIC  PHILOSOPHY   37 

1.  Its  Propounders        .......  87 

2.  The  Atoms   37 

3.  The  Fulness  and  the  Void             .....  88 

4.  The  Atomistic  Necessity          ......  33 

5.  Eelative  Position  of  the  Atomistic  Philosophy      ...  89 

X.— ANAXAGORAS   40 

1.  His  Personal  History          ......  40 

2.  His  Relation  to  his  Predecessors         .....  41 

3.  The  Principle  of  the  j/oDs     ......  41 

4.  Anaxagoras  as  the  close  of  the  Pre-Socratic  Realism          ,        .  42 

XI  -THE  SOPHISTIC  PHILOSOPHY      .         .         .                  .  43 

1.  The  Relation  of  the  Sophistic  Philosophy  to  the  Anaxagorcan  Prin- 

ciple 43 

2.  Relation  of  the  Sophistic  Philosophy  to  the  Universal  Life  of  that 

Age           ........  44 

8.  Tendencies  of  the  Sophistic  Philosophy         .         ,         .  .46 

4.  Significance  of  the  Sophistic  Philosophy  from  its  relation  to  the 

Culture  of  the  Age           .                  ....  47 

5.  Individual  Sophists        .......  48 

6.  Transition  to  Socrates,  and  characteristic  of  the  following  Period  51 

XXL— SOCRATES   52 

1.  His  Personal  Character       ......  52 

2.  Socrates  and  Aristophanes        ......  55 

3.  The  Condemnation  of  Socrates       .....  57 

4.  The  Genius  of  Socrates           ......  60 

5.  Sources  of  the  Philosophy  of  Socrates       ....  61 

6.  Universal  Character  of  the  Philosophizing  of  Socrates         .         .  62 

7.  The  Socratic  Method   64 

8.  The  Socratic  Doctrine  concerning  Virtue       .         .         .  .66 

XIII.— THE  PARTIAL  DISCIPLES  OF  SOCRATES       ...  67 

1.  Their  Relation  to  the  Socratic  Philosophy      .         .         .  .67 

2.  Antisthenes  and  the  Cynics           ...        .        .        .  68 


CONTENTS. 


ix 


Sect.  Xlll.— (continued.)  page 

3.  Aristippus  and  the  Cyrenians  69 

4.  Eiiclirt  and  the  Megarians     ......  70 

5.  Plato  as  the  complete  Socraticist         .....  71 

XIY.-PLATO   72 

I.  Plato's  Ltfe        .......  72 

1.  His  Youth   72 

2.  His  Years  of  Discipline         .....  73 

3.  His  Yi'ars  of  Travel   73 

4.  His  Years  of  Instruction       .....  74 

II.  The  Inner  Development  of  the  Platonic  Philosophy  and 

WpvItings      ........  75 

III.  Classification  of  the  Platonic  System  .  .  82 
lY.  The  Platonic  Dialectics     ......  83 

1.  Conception  of  Dialectics        .....  83 

■    2.  What  is  Science  ?   84 

(1.)  As  opposed  to  Sensation        ....  84 

(2.)  The  Relation  of  Knowing  to  Opinion     .         .         .  86 

(3.)  The  Relation  of  Science  to  Thinking          .         .  86 

8.  The  Doctrine  of  Ideas  in  its  Genesis      .         ...  87 

4.  Positive  Exposition  of  the  Doctrine  of  Ideas         .         .  91 

5.  The  Relation  of  Ideas  to  the  Phenomenal  World        .         .  93 

6.  The  Idea  of  the  Good  and  the  Deity          ...  95 
V.  The  Platonic  Physics  96 

1.  Nature  ........  96 

2.  The  Soul   98 

YI.  The  Platonic  Ethics      ......  100 

1.  Good  and  Pleasure          ......  100 

2,  Yirtue   102 

8  The  State   102 

XY.— THE  OLD  ACADEMY   107 

XYI.— ARISTOTLE   103 

I.  Life  and  Writings  of  Aeistotlb         ....  103 

II.  Universal  Character  and  Division  of  the  Aristotelian  Phi- 

losophy      ........  109 

III.  Logic  and  Metaphysics  ......  112 

1.  Conception  and  Relation  of  the  Two      ....  112 

2.  Logic     ........  113 

3.  Metaphysics         .......  115 

(1.)  The  Aristotelian  Criticism  of  the  Platonic  Doctrine  of 

Ideas   .......  116 

(2.)  The  Forir  Aristotelian  Principles,  or  Causes,  and  the 

Relation  of  Form  and  Matter   .         .         .  .120 

(3.)  Potentiality  and  Actuality      ....  123 

(4.)  The  Absolute  Divine  Spirit        ....  124 

lY.  The  Aristotelian  Physics        .....  127 

1.  Motion,  Matter,  Space,  and  Time         ....  127 

2.  The  Collective  Universe  .....  128 
8.  Nature                                                              .  .129 

4.  Man   129 


X 


CONTENTS. 


Sect.  XV L— (continued.)  pagh 

V.  The  Akistotelian  Etuics     .....  131 

1.  Eelation  of  Ethics  to  Physics          ....  131 

2.  The  Highest  Good   132 

8.  Conception  of  Virtue  ......  134 

4.  The  State   ,         .         .         .  •       .         .         .  .135 

VI.  The  Peripatetic  School           .....  136 

VII.   Ti'.A>-SITION  TO  THE  PoST-ArISTOTELIAN  PHILOSOPHY         .            .  137 

XVII.— STOICISM   13S 

1.  Logic     .........  139 

2.  Physics       ........  140 

3.  Ethics   142 

(1.)  Kespecting  the  Eelation  of  Virtue  to  Pleasure   .         .  142 

(2.)  The  View  of  the  Stoics  concerning  External  Good           .  142 

(3.)  Farther  Verification  of  this  View  ...  143 
(4.)  Impossibility  of  furnishing  a  System  of  Concrete  Moial 

Duties  from  this  Standpoint         ....  143 

XVIII.-EPICUEEANISM   145 

XIX.-SCEPTICISM  AND  THE  NEW  ACADEMY  .         .  .143 

1.  The  Old  Scepticism   149 

2.  The  New  Academy     .                  .....  150 

3.  The  Later  Scepticism       ......  151 

XX.— THE  EOMANS   152 

XXL— NEW  PLATONISM   154 

1.  Ecstasy  as  a  Subjective  State          .....  154 

2.  The  Cosmical  Principles    ......  154 

3.  The  Emanation  Theory  of  the  New  Platonists       .         .  .155 

XXIL-CHEISTIANITY  AND  SCHOLASTICISM         ...  157 

1.  The  Christian  Idea      .......  157 

2.  Scholasticism         .......  159 

3.  Nominalism  and  Eealism      .....  160 

XXIIL— TEANSITION  TO  THE  MODEEN  PHILOSOPHY     .         .  161 

1.  Fall  of  Scholasticism   .......  161 

2.  The  Eesults  of  Scholasticism       .....  162 

3.  The  Eevival  of  Letters          ......  163 

4.  The  German  Eeformation          .         .         .         .         .  164 

5.  The  Advancement  of  the  Natural  Sciences           .         .         .  165 

6.  Bacon  of  Verulam            ......  166 

7.  The  Italian  Philosophers  of  the  Transition  Epoch           .         .  167 

8.  Jacob  Boehme       .......  169 

XXIV.— DESCAETES   172 

1.  The  Beginning  of  Philosophy  with  Doubt        ...  173 

2.  Cogito  ergo  sum         .......  173 

8.  The  Nature  of  Mind  deduced  from  this  Principle        .         .  173 

4.  The  Universal  Eule  of  all  Certainty  follows  from  the  same        .  174 


CONTENTS.  Xi 

Sect.  XXIY.— (continued.)  pagr 

5.  The  Existence  of  God   174 

6.  Eesults  of  this  Fact  in  PLilosophy    .         .         ,         .  .176 

7.  The  Two  Substances   177 

8.  The  Anthropology  of  Descartes       .         .         .        .  .177 

9.  Eesults  of  the  Cartesian  System  .....  178 

XXV.  — GEULINCX  AND  MALEBEANGHE  .        .        .  .180 

1.  Geulincx   180 

2.  Malebranche   182 

8.  The  Defects  of  the  rhilosophy  of  Descartes      ...  183 

XXVI.  -SPINOZA                                                                 .         .  1S4 

1.  The  One  Infinite  Substance   185 

2.  The  Two  Attributes    .......  186 

3.  The  Modes  1S8 

4.  His  Practical  Philosophy      ......  189 

XXVIL— IDEALISM  AND  EEALISM   192 

XXVIII.— LOCKE   193 

XXIX.— HUME    193 

XXX— CONDILLAC         .        .    201 

XXXI.— HELVETIUS   203 

XXXIL— THE  FEENCH  CLEAEING  UP  AND  MATEEIALISM  .         .  205 

1.  The  Common  Character  of  the  French  Philosophers  of  this  Age  205 

2.  Voltaire  .  "       .         .         .         .         .         .  .206 

3.  Diderot       ........  206 

4.  La  Mettrie's  Materialism       ......  207 

5.  Syst^me  de  la  Nature       ......  208 

(1.)  The  Materiality  of  Man   208 

(2.)  The  Atheism  of  this  System         ....  209 

(3.)  Its  Denial  of  Freedom  and  Immortality      .        .        .  2-10 

(4.)  The  Practical  Consciuences  of  these  Principles          .  210 

XXXIIL-LEIBNITZ   211 

1.  The  Doctrine  of  Monads        ......  213 

2.  The  Monads  more  accurately  determined        .        .        .  214 

3.  The  Pre-established  Harmony         .         .         .         ,  .215 

4.  The  Eelation  of  the  Deity  to  the  Monads         ...  216 

5.  The  Eelation  of  Soul  and  Body   217 

6.  The  Theory  of  Knowledge   218 

7.  Leibnitz's  Theodic6e  .......  219 

XXXIV.— BEEKELEY   220 

XXXV.-WOLFP   222 

1.  Ontology     ........  224 

2.  Cosmology       ........  225 

8.  Eational  Psychology        ......  225 

4.  Natural  Theology      .......  226 


CONTENTS. 


PAGH 


Sect.  XXXVI.— THE  GERMAN  CLEARING  UP   227 

XXXVII.— TRANSITION  TO  KANT   229 

1.  Examination  of  the  Faculty  of  Knowledge       .         .         .  230 

2.  Three  Chief  Principles  of  the  Kantian  Theory  of  Knowledge  232 

XXXVIII.-KANT   235 

I.  Ckitick  of  Puee  Reason     .         .        ,        .         .  23S 

1.  The  Transcendental  Esthetics  .         .  .233 

(1.)  The  Metaphysical  Discussion  ...  239 
(2.)  The  Transcendental  Discussion       .         .  .239 

2.  The  Transcendental  Analytic     ....  241 

3.  The  Transcendental  Dialectics       ....  246 

(1.)  The  Psychological  Ideas   ....  247 

(2.)  The  Antinomies  of  Cosmology        .         .         .  248 

(3.)  The  Ideal  of  the  Pure  Reason     ...  249 
(a.)  The  Ontological  Proof          .         .  .249 

(&.)  The  Cosmological  Proof    ...  250 

(c.)  The  Physico-Theological  Proof        .         .  250 

II.  Critick  of  the  Pkactical  Reason        .     •    .         .  252 

(1.)  The  Analytic   .         .         .         .         .  .254 

(2.)  The  Dialectic :  What  is  this  Highest  Good  ?     .  256 

(«.)  Perfect  Virtue  or  Holiness      .         ,         .  257 

(&.)  Perfect  Happiness  ....  258 

(c.)  Kant's  Views  of  Religion       .         .         .  259 

III.  Ckitick  of  the  Faculty  of  Judgment    .         .         .  262 

1.  Critick  of  the  ^Esthetic  Faculty  of  Judgment      .         .  263 

(1.)  Analytic     ......  263 

(2.)  Dialectic   265 

2.  Critick  of  the  Teleological  Faculty  of  Judgment       .  266 

(1.)  Analytic  of  the  Teleological  Faculty  of  Judgment  .  267 

(2.)  Dialectic   267 

XXXIX.— TRANSITION  TO  THE  POST-KANTIAN  PHILOSOPHY  .  268 

XL.— JACOBI   271 

XLL— FICHTE   279 

I.  The  Fichtian  Philosophy  in  its  Original.  Form       .  282 

1.  The  Theoretical  Philosophy  of  Fichte,  his  "VVissenschafts- 

lehre,  or  Theory  of  Science        ....  282 

2.  Fichte's  Practical  Philosophy    ....  295 
II.  The  Later  Form  of  Fichte's  Philosophy   .         .  .301 

XLII.-HERBART   303 

1.  The  Basis  and  Starting-Point  of  Philosophy                      .  304 

2.  The  First  Act  of  Philosophy           ....  304 

3.  Remodelling  the  Conceptions  of  Experience                      .  305 

4.  Herbart's  Reals         .....  806 

5.  Psychology  connected  with  Metaphysics        .                  .  310 

6.  The  Importance  of  Herbart's  Philosophy            ,  811 


CONTENTS. 


xiii 


PAGH 

Bbot.  XLIII. -SCHELLING        ........  312 

I.  First  Period:  Schelling's  Procession  from  Fichte      .  314 
II.  Second  Period:   Standpoint  op  the  distinguishing  be- 
tween THK  Philosophy  of  Nature  and  of  Mind  .  318 


1.  Natural  Philosophy    .         .         .         ,         .         .  313 

(1.)  Organic  Nature      .         .         .         .         .  .319 

(2.)  Inorganic  Nature        .....  321 

(3.)  The  Eeciprocal  Determination  of  the  Organic  and  Inor- 
ganic World       ......  321 

2.  Transcendental  Philosophy  .....  322 

(1.)  The  Theoretical  Philosophy        .         .         .  .323 

(2.)  The  Practical  Philosophy       ....  324 

(3.)  Philosophy  of  Art   324 

III.  Third  Period  :  Period  of  Spinozism,  ok  the  Indifference  of 

THE  Ideal  and  the  Eeal    .....  326 
ly.  Fourth  Period:  The  Direction  op  Schelling's  xhilosophy 

AS  Mystical,  and  allied  to  New  Platonism      '.         .  333 
Y.  Fifth  Period:  Attempt  at  a  Theogony  and  Cosmogony, 

AFTER  THE  MANNER  OF  JaCOB  BoEHME       .             .             .  335 

(1.)  The  Progressive  Development  of  Nature  to  Man        .  337 

(2.)  The  Development  of  Mind  in  Histoiy         .         .  387 

VI.  Sixth  Period          .......  333 

XLIV.— TEANSITION  TO  HEGEL   339 

XLV.— HEGEL   343 

I.  Science  of  Logic         ......  346 

1.  The  Doctrine  of  Being  ......  347 

(1.)  Quality   347 

(2.)  Quantity   348 

(3.)  Measure        ......  343 

2.  The  Doctrine  of  Essence        .         .         .         .  .349 

(1.)  The  Essence  as  such          ....  349 

(2.)  Essence  and  Phenomenon       ....  350 

(3.)  Actuality      ......  351 

8.  The  Doctrine  of  the  Conception        .         .         .  .352 

(1.)  The  Subjective  Conception          .        .        ,  352 

(2.)  Objectivity   353 

(3.)  The  Idea   353 

II.  The  Science  op  Nature    ......  353 

1.  Mechanics     .......  354 

2.  Physics  ......          .         .  355 

3.  Organics       .......  355 

(1.)  Geological  Organism     .....  355 

(2.)  Vegetable  Organism          ....  355 

(3.)  Animal  Organism         .....  356 

III.  Philosophy  of  Mind     ......  356 

1.  The  Subjective  Mind    ......  356 

2.  The  Objective  Mind  .....  358 
&  The  Absolute  Mind   862 


XIV  CONTENTS. 


Sect.  XLV. — (continued.)  pagh 

(1.)  Esthetics  863 

(a.)  Architecture      .         .         .         .  .863 

(p.)  Sculpture  862 

(c.)  Tainting  ......  864 

Id.)  Music  864 

(e.)  Poetry      ......  364 

(2.)  Philosophy  of  Ecligion        ....  864 

(a.)  The  Natural  Keligion  of  the  Oriental  World  .  864 
(?>.)  The  Pteligion  of  Mental  Individuality       .  364 
(c.)  Eevealed,  or  the  Christian  Keligion    .  365 
(a)  Absolute  Philosophy        ....  865 


A 


HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


SECTION  I. 

WHAT  IS  MEANT  BY  THE  HISTOKY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 

To  philosophize  is  to  reflect ;  to  examine  things,  in  thought. 

Yet  in  this  is  the  conception  of  philosophy  not  sufficiently 
defined.  Man,  as  thinking,  also  employs  those  practical  activities 
concerned  in  the  adaptation  of  means  to  an  end ;  the  whole  body 
of  sciences  also,  even  those  which  do  not  in  strict  sense  belong 
to  philosophy,  still  lie  in  the  realm  of  thought.  In  what,  then, 
is  philosophy  distinguished  from  these  sciences,  e.  g.  from  the 
science  of  astronomy,  of  medicine,  or  of  rights  ?  Certainly  not 
in  that  it  has  a  different  material  to  work  upon.  Its  material  is 
precisely  the  same  as  that  of  the  different  empirical  sciences. 
The  construction  and  disposition  of  the  universe,  the  arrangement 
and  functions  of  the  human  body,  the  doctrines  of  property,  of 
rights  and  of  the  state — all  these  materials  belong  as  truly  to 
philosophy  as  to  their  appropriate  sciences.  That  which  is  given 
in  the  world  of  experience,  that  which  is  real,  is  the  content  like- 
wise of  philosophy.    It  is  not,  therefore,  in  its  material  but  in  its 


12 


A  HISTORY  OF  ,  PHILOSOPHY. 


form,  in  its  method,  in  its  mode  of  knowledge,  that  philosophy  Is 
to  be  distinguished  from  the  empirical  sciences.  These  latter 
derive  their  material  directly  from  experience ;  they  find  it  at 
hand  and  take  it  up  just  as  they  find  it.  Philosophy,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  never  satisfied  with  receiving  that  which  is  given  simply 
as  it  is  given,  but  rather  follows  it  out  to  its  ultimate  grounds ;  it 
examines  every  individual  thing  in  reference  to  a  final  principle, 
and  considers  it  as  one  link  in  the  whole  chain  of  knowledge.  In 
this  way  philosophy  removes  from  the  individual  thing  given  in 
experience,  its  immediate,  individual,  and  accidental  character ; 
from  the  sea  of  empirical  individualities,  it  brings  out  that  which 
is  common  to  all ;  from  the  infinite  and  orderless  mass  of  con- 
tingencies it  finds  that  which  is  necessary,  and  throws  over  all  a 
universal  law.  In  short,  philosophy  examines  the  totality  of 
experience  in  the  form  of  an  organic  system  in  harmony  with  the 
laws  of  thought.  From  the  above  it  is  seen,  that  philosophy  (in 
the  sense  we  have  given  it)  and  the  empirical  sciences  have  a 
reciprocal  influence;  the  latter  conditioning  the  former,  while 
they  at  the  same  time  are  conditioned  by  it.  We  shall,  therefore, 
in  the  history  of  the  world,  no  more  find  an  absolute  and  complete 
philosophy,  than  a  complete  empirical  science  {EmpiriJc).  Rather 
is  philosophy  found  only  in  the  form  of  the  difi'erent  philosophical 
systems,  which  have  successively  appeared  in  the  course  of 
history,  advancing  hand  in  hand  with  the  progress  of  the  empirical 
sciences  and  the  universal,  social,  and  civil  culture,  and  showing 
in  their  advance  the  difi'erent  steps  in  the  development  and  im- 
provement of  human  science.  The  history  of  philosophy  has,  for 
its  object,  to  represent  the  content,  the  succession,  and  the  inner 
connection  of  these  philosophical  systems. 

The  relation  of  these  difi'erent  systems  to  each  other  is  thus 
already  intimated.  The  historical  and  collective  life  of  the  race 
is  bound  together  by  the  idea  of  a  spiritual  and  intellectual  pro- 
gress, and  manifests  a  regular  order  of  advancing,  though  not 
always  continuous,  stages  of  development.  In  this,  the  fact  har- 
monizes with  what  we  should  expect  from  antecedent  probabilities. 
Since,  therefore,  every  philosophical  system  is  only  the  philo* 


WHAT  IS  MEANT  BY  THE  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY.  13 

sophical  expression  of  the  collective  life  of  its  time,  it  follows  that 
these  different  systems  which  have  appeared  in  history  will  dis- 
close one  organic  movement  and  form  together  one  rational  and 
internally  connected  (gegliedertes)  system.  In  all  their  develop- 
ments, we  shall  find  one  constant  order,  grounded  in  the  striving 
of  the  spirit  ever  to  raise  itself  to  a  higher  point  of  consciousness 
and  knowledge,  and  to  recognize  the  whole  spiritual  and  natural 
universe,  more  and  more,  as  its  outward  being,  as  its  reality,  as 
the  mirror  of  itself. 

Hegel  was  the  first  to  utter  these  thoughts  and  to  consider 
the  history  of  philosophy  as  a  united  process,  hut  this  view, 
which  is,  in  its  principle,  true,  he  has  applied  in  a  way  which 
would  destroy  the  freedom  of  human  actions,  and  remove  the  very 
conception  of  contingency,  i.  e.  that  any  thing  should  be  contrary 
to  reason.  Hegel's  view  is,  that  the  succession  of  the  systems  of 
philosophy  which  have  appeared  in  history,  corresponds  to  the 
succession  of  logical  categories  in  a  system  of  logic.  According 
to  him,  if,  from  the  fundamental  conceptions  of  these  different 
philosophical  systems,  we  remove  that  which  pertains  to  their 
outward  form  or  particular  application,  &c.,  so  do  we  find  the 
different  steps  of  the  logical  conceptions  (e.  g.  being,  becoming, 
existence,  being j9er  se  (f  msichseyn)  quantity,  &c.).  And  on  the 
other  hand,  if  we  take  up  the  logical  process  by  itself,  we  find  also 
in  it  the  actual  historical  process. 

This  opinion,  however,  can  be  sustained  neither  in  its  prin- 
ciple nor  in  its  historical  application.  It  is  defective  in  its  prin- 
ciple, because  in  history  freedom  and  necessity  interpenetrate,  and, 
therefore,  while  we  find,  if  we  consider  it  in  its  general  aspects,  a 
rational  connection  running  through  the  whole,  we  also  see,  if  we 
look  solely  at  its  individual  parts,  only  a  play  of  numberless  con- 
tingencies, just  as  the  kingdom  of  nature,  taken  as  a  whole, 
reveals  a  rational  plan  in  its  successions,  but  viewed  only  in  ita 
parts,  mocks  at  every  attempt  to  reduce  them  to  a  preconceived 
plan.  In  history  we  have  to  do  with  free  subjectivities,  with  in- 
dividuals capable  of  originating  actions,  and  have,  therefore,  a 
factor  which  does  not  admit  of  a  previous  calculation.    For  how- 


14 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


ever  accurately  we  may  estimate  tlie  controlling  conditions  which 
may  attach  to  an  individual,  from  the  general  circumstances  in 
which  he  may  be  placed,  his  age,  his  associations,  his  nationality, 
&c.,  a  free  will  can  never  be  calculated  like  a  mathematical  pro- 
blem. History  is  no  example  for  a  strict  arithmetical  calculation. 
The  history  of  philosophy,  therefore,  cannot  admit  of  an  apriori 
construction ;  the  actual  occurrences  should  not  be  joined  together 
as  illustrative  of  a  preconceived  plan;  but  the  facts,  so  far  as 
they  can  be  admitted,  after  a  critical  sifting,  should  be  received 
as  such,  and  their  rational  connection  be  analytically  determined. 
The  speculative  idea  can  only  supply  the  law  for  the  arrangement 
and  scientific  connection  of  that  which  may  be  historically 
furnished. 

A  more  comprehensive  view,  which  contradicts  the  above- 
given  Hegelian  notion,  is  the  following.  The  actual  historical 
development  is,  very  generally,  different  from  the  theoretical. 
Historically  e.  g.  the  State  arose  as  a  means  of  protection  against 
robbers,  while  theoretically  it  is  derived  from  the  idea  of  rights. 
So  also,  even  in  the  actual  history  of  philosophy,  while  the  logi- 
cal (theoretical)  process  is  an  ascent  from  the  abstract  to  the  con- 
crete, yet  does  the  historical  development  of  philosophy,  quite 
generally,  descend  from  the  concrete  to  the  abstract,  from  intui- 
tion to  thought,  and  separates  the  abstract  from  the  concrete  in 
those  general  forms  of  culture  and  those  religious  and  social  cir- 
cumstances, in  which  the  philosophizing  subject  is  placed.  A 
system  of  philosophy  proceeds  synthetically,  while  the  history  of 
philosophy,  i.  e.  the  history  of  the  thinking  process  proceeds 
analytically.  We  might,  therefore,  with  great  propriety,  adopt 
directly  the  reverse  of  the  Hegelian  position,  and  say  that  what 
in  reality  is  the  first,  is  for  us,  in  fact,  the  last.  This  is  illustra- 
ted in  the  Ionic  philosophy.  It  began  not  with  being  as  an  ab- 
stract conception,  but  with  the  most  concrete,  and  most  apparent, 
e.  g.  with  the  material  conception  of  water,  air,  &c.  Even  if  we 
leave  the  Ionics  and  advance  to  the  being  of  the  Eleatics  or  the 
becoming  of  the  Heraclitics,  we  find,  that  these,  instead  of  being 
pure  thought  determinations,  are  only  unpurified  conceptions,  and 


WHAT  IS  MEANT  BY  THE  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY.  15 

materially  colored  intuitions.  Still  farther,  is  the  attempt  im- 
practicable to  refer  every  philosophy  that  has  appeared  in  history 
to  some  logical  category  as  its  central  principle,  because  the  most 
of  these  philosophies  have  taken,  for  their  object,  the  idea,  not  as 
an  abstract  conception,  but  in  its  realization  as  nature  and  mind, 
and,  therefore,  for  the  most  part,  have  to  do,  not  with  logical 
questions,  but  with  those  relating  to  natural  philosophy,  psycho- 
logy and  ethics.  Hegel  should  not,  therefore,  limit  his  compari- 
son of  the  historical  and  systematic  process  of  development  simply 
to  logic,  but  should  extend  it  to  the  whole  system  of  philosophical 
science.  Grranted  that  the  Eleatics,  the  Heraclitics  and  the 
Atomists  may  have  made  such  a  category  as  the  centre  of  their 
systems,  and  we  may  find  thus  far  the  Hegelian  logic  in  harmony 
with  the  Hegelian  history  of  philosophy.  But  if  we  go  farther, 
how  is  it  ?  How  with  Anaxagoras,  the  Sophists,  Socrates,  Plato, 
Aristotle  ?  We  cannot,  certainly,  without  violence,  press  one 
central  principle  into  the  systems  of  these  men,  but  if  we  should 
be  able  to  do  it,  and  could  reduce  e.  g.  the  philosophy  of  Anaxa- 
goras to  the  conception  of  "  the  end,"  that  of  the  Sophists  to  the 
conception  of  "  the  appearance,"  and  the  Socratic  Philosophy  to 
the  conception  of  "  the  good," — yet  even  then  we  have  the  new 
difficulty  that  the  historical  does  not  correspond  to  the  logical 
succession  of  these  categories.  In  fact,  Hegel  himself  has  not 
attempted  a  complete  application  of  his  principle,  and  indeed  gave 
it  up  at  the  very  threshold  of  the  Grecian  philosophy.  To  the 
Eleatics,  the  Heraclitics  and  the  Atomists,  the  logical  categories 
of  "being,"  "  becoming,"  and  being  per  se  may  be  successively 
ascribed,  and  so  far,  as  already  remarked,  the  parallelism  extends, 
but  no  farther.  Not  only  does  Anaxagoras  follow  with  the  con- 
ception of  reason  working  according  to  an  end,  but  if  we  go  back 
before  the  Eleatics,  we  find  in  the  very  beginning  of  philosophy 
a  total  diversity  between  the  logical  and  historical  order.  If 
Hegel  had  carried  out  his  principle  consistently,  he  should  have 
thrown  away  entirely  the  Ionic  philosophy,  for  matter  is  no  logical 
category he  should  have  placed  the  Pythagoreans  after  the 
Eleatics  and  the  Atomists,  for  in  logical  order  the  categories  of 


16 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


quantity  follow  those  of  quality ;  in  short,  he  would  have  been 
obliged  to  set  aside  all  chronology.  Unless  this  be  done,  we  must 
be  satisfied  with  a  theoretical  reproduction  of  the  course  which  the 
thinking  spirit  has  taken  in  its  history,  only  so  far  as  we  can  see 
in  the  grand  stages  of  history  a  rational  progress  of  thought ;  only 
so  far  as  the  philosophical  historian,  surveying  a  period  of  de- 
velopment, actually  finds  in  it  a  philosophical  acquisition, — the 
acquisition  of  a  new  idea  :  but  we  must  guard  ourselves  against 
applying  to  the  transition  and  intermediate  steps,  as  well  as  to  the 
whole  detail  of  history,  the  postulate  of  an  immanent  conformity 
to  law,  or  an  organism  in  harmony  with  our  own  thoughts.  His- 
tory often  winds  its  way  like  a  serpent  in  lines  which  appear  retro- 
gressive, and  philosophy,  especially,  has  not  seldom  withdrawn 
herself  from  a  wide  and  already  fruitful  field,  in  order  to  settle 
down  upon  a  narrow  strip  of  land,  the  limits  even  of  which  she 
has  sought  still  more  closely  to  abridge.  At  one  time  we  fimd 
thousands  of  years  expended  in  fruitless  attempts  with  only  a 
negative  result ; — at  another,  a  fulness  of  philosophical  ideas  are 
crowded  together  in  the  experience  of  a  lifetime.  There  is  here 
no  sway  of  an  immutable  and  regularly  returning  law,  but  history, 
as  the  realm  of  freedom,  will  first  completely  manifest  itself  at 
the  end  of  time  as  the  work  of  reason. 


SECTION  II. 

CLASSIFICATION. 

A  FEW  words  will  suffice  to  define  our  problem  and  classify  its 
elements.  Where  and  when  does  philosophy  begin  ?  Manifestly, 
according  to  the  analysis  made  in  ^  I.,  where  a  final  philosophical 
principle,  a  final  ground  of  being  is  first  sought  in  a  philosophical 
way, — and  hence  with  the  Grecian  philosophy.  The  Oriental — 
Chinese  and  Hindoo — so  named  philosophies, — but  which  are 
rather  theologies  or  mythologies, — and  the  mythic  cosmogonies  of 


GENERAL  VIEW  OF  THE  PRE-SOCRATIC  PHILOSOPHY.  17 

Greece,  in  its  earliest  periods,  are,  therefore,  excluded  from  our 
more  definite  problem.  Like  Aristotle,  we  shall  begin  the  history 
of  philosophy  with  Thales.  For  similar  reasons  we  exclude  also 
the  philosophy  of  the  Christian  middle  ages,  or  Scholasticism. 
This  is  not  so  much  a  philosophy,  as  a  philosophizing  or  reflecting 
within  the  already  prescribed  limits  of  positive  religion.  It  is, 
therefore,  essentially  theology,  and  belongs  to  the  science  of  the 
history  of  Christian  doctrines. 

The  material  which  remains  after  this  exclusion,  may  be 
naturally  divided  into  two  periods ;  viz  : — ancient — Grecian  and 
Groeco-Romanic — and  modern  philosophy.  Since  a  preliminary 
comparison  of  the  characteristics  of  these  two  epochs  could  not 
here  be  given  without  a  subsequent  repetition,  we  shall  first  speak 
of  their  inner  relations,  when  we  come  to  treat  of  the  transition 
from  the  one  to  the  other. 

The  first  epoch  can  be  still  farther  divided  into  three  periods  ; 
(1.)  The  pre-Socratic  philosophy,  i.  e.  from  Thales  to  the  Sophists 
inclusive;  (2.)  Socrates,  Plato,  Aristotle;  (3.)  The  post- Aris- 
totelian phil:^sophy,  including  New  Platonism. 


SECTION  III. 

GENEKAL  VIEW  OF  THE  PRE-SOCRATIC  PHILOSOPHY. 

1.  The  universal  tendency  of  the  pre-Socratic  philosophy  is 
to  find  some  principle  for  the  explanation  of  nature.  Nature,  the 
most  immediate,  that  which  first  met  the  eye  and  was  the  most 
palpable,  was  that  which  first  aroused  the  inquiring  mind.  At  the 
basis  of  its  changing  forms, — beneath  its  manifold  appearances, 
thought  they,  lies  a  first  principle  which  abides  the  same  through 
all  change.  What  then,  they  asked,  is  this  principle  ?  What  is 
the  original  ground  of  things  ?  Or,  more  accurately,  what  ele- 
ment of  nature  is  the  fundamental  element  ?  To  solve  this 
inquiry  was  the  problem  of  the  Ionic  natural  philosophers.  One 


18 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


proposes  as  a  solution,  water,  another,  air,  and  a  third,  an  original 
chaotic  matter. 

2.  The  Pythagoreans  attempted  a  higher  solution  of  this 
problem.  The  proportions  and  dimensions  of  matter  rather  than 
its  sensible  concretions,  seemed  to  them  to  furnish  the  true  ex- 
planation of  being.  They,  accordingly,  adopted  as  the  principle 
of  their  philosophy,  that  which  would  express  a  determination  of 
proportions,  i.  e.  numbers.  "  Number  is  the  essence  of  all  things," 
was  their  position.  Number  is  the  mean  between  the  immediate 
sensuous  intuition  and  the  pure  thought.  Number  and  measure 
have,  to  be  sure,  nothing  to  do  with  matter  only  in  so  far  as  it 
possesses  extension,  and  is  capable  of  division  in  space  and  time, 
but  yet  we  should  have  no  numbers  or  measures  if  there  were  no 
matter,  or  nothing  which  could  meet  the  intuitions  of  our  sense. 
This  elevation  above  matter,  which  is  at  the  same  time  a  cleaving 
to  matter,  constitutes  the  essence  and  the  character  of  Pythago- 
reanism. 

3.  Next  come  the  JEleatics,  who  step  absolutely  beyond  that 
which  is  given  in  experience,  and  make  a  complete  abstraction  of 
every  thing  material.  This  abstraction,  this  negation  of  all  divi- 
sion in  space  and  time,  they  take  as  their  principle,  and  call  it 
pure  being.  Instead  of  the  sensuous  principle  of  the  Ionics,  or 
the  symbolic  principle  of  the  Pythagoreans,  the  Eleatics,  there- 
fore, adopt  an  intelligible  principle. 

4.  Herewith  closes  the  analytic,  the  first  course  in  the 
development  of  Grecian  philosophy,  to  make  way  for  the  second, 
or  synthetic  course.  The  Eleatics  had  sacrificed  to  their  principle 
of  pure  being,  the  existence  of  the  world  and  every  finite  existence. 
But  the  denial  of  nature  and  the  world  could  not  be  maintained. 
The  reality  of  both  forced  itself  upon  the  attention,  and  even  the 
Eleatics  had  affirmed  it,  though  in  guarded  and  hypothetical 
terms.  But  from  their  abstract  being  there  was  no  passage  back 
to  the  sensuous  and  concrete ;  their  principle  ought  to  have  ex- 
plained the  being  of  events,  but  it  did  not.  To  find  a  principle 
for  the  explanation  of  these,  a  principle  which  would  account  for 
the  becoming,  the  event  was  still  the  problem.    Heraclitus  solved 


GENERAL  VIEW  OF  THE  PRE-SOCRATIC  PHILOSOPHY.  19 

it,  by  asserting  that,  inasmuch  as  being  has  no  more  reality  than 
not  being,  therefore  the  unity  of  the  two,  or  in  other  words  the 
becoming,  is  the  absolute  principle.  He  held  that  it  belonged  to 
the  very  essence  of  finite  being  that  it  be  conceived  in  a  continual 
flow,  in  an  endless  stream.  "  Every  thing  flows."  We  have  here 
the  conception  of  original  energy,  instead  of  the  Ionic  original 
matter ;  the  first  attempt  to  explain  being  and  its  motion  from  a 
principle  analytically  attained.  From  the  time  of  Heraclitus,  this 
inquiry  after  the  cause  of  the  becoming,  remained  the  chief  interest 
and  the  moving  spring  of  philosophical  development. 

5.  Becoming  is  the  unity  of  being  and  not-being,  and  into 
these  two  elements  is  the  Heraclitic  principle  consciously  analyzed 
by  the  Atomists.  Heraclitus  had  uttered  the  principle  of  the 
becoming,  but  only  as  a  fact  of  experience.  He  had  simply  ex- 
pressed it  as  a  law,  but  had  not  explained  it.  The  necessity  for 
this  universal  law  yet  remained  to  be  proved.  Why  is  every  thing 
in  a  perpetual  flow — in  an  eternal  movement?  From  the  dy- 
namical combination  of  matter  and  the  moving  force,  the  next 
step  was  to  a  consciously  determined  distinction,  to  a  mechanical 
division  of  the  two.  Thus  Empedocles  combining  the  doctrines 
of  Heraclitus  and  Parmenides,  considered  matter  as  the  abiding 
being,  while  force  was  the  ground  of  the  movement.  But  the 
Atomists  still  considered  the  moving  mythic  energies  as  forces ; 
Empedocles  regarded  them  as  love  and  hate ;  and  Democritus  as 
unconscious  necessity.  The  result  was,  therefore,  that  the  be- 
coming was  rather  limited  as  a  means  for  the  mechanical  explana- 
tion of  nature,  than  itself  explained. 

6.  Despairing  of  any  merely  materialistic  explanation  of  the 
becoming,  Anaxagoras  next  appears,  and  places  a  world-forming 
Intelligence  by  the  side  of  matter.  He  recognized  mind  as  the 
primal  causality,  to  which  the  existence  of  the  world,  together 
with  its  determined  arrangement  and  design  (zweckmdssigkeit) 
must  be  referred.  In  this,  philosophy  gained  a  great  principle, 
-viz. — an  ideal  one.  But  Anaxagoras  did  not  know  how  to  fully 
carry  out  his  principles.  Instead  of  a  theoretical  comprehension  of 
the  universe — instead  of  deriving  being  from  the  idea,  he  grasped 


20 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


again  after  some  mechanical  explanation.  His  "  world  forming 
reason"  serves  him  only  as  a  first  impulse,  only  as  a  moving 
power.  It  is  to  liim  a  Deus  ex  machina.  Notwithstanding, 
therefore,  his  glimpse  of  something  higher  than  matter,  yet  waa 
Anaxagoras  only  a  physical  philosopher,  like  his  predecessors 
Mind  had  not  yet  appeared  to  him  as  a  true  force  above  nature, 
as  an  organizing  soul  of  the  universe. 

7.  It  is,  therefore,  a  farther  progress  in  thought,  to  compre- 
hend accurately  the  distinction  between  mind  and  nature,  and  to 
recognize  mind  as  something  higher  and  contra-distinguished  from 
all  natural  being.  This  problem  fell  to  the  Sophists.  They  en- 
tangled in  contradictions,  the  thinking  which  had  been  confined 
to  the  object,  to  that  which  was  given,  and  gave  to  the  objective 
world  which  had  before  been  exalted  above  the  subject,  a  sub- 
ordinate position  in  the  dawning  and  yet  infantile  consciousness 
of  the  superiority  of  subjective  thinking.  The  Sophists  carried 
their  principle  of  subjectivity,  though  at  first  this  was  only  nega- 
tive, into  the  form  of  the  universal  religious  and  political  chang- 
ing condition  (Aufkldrung).  *  They  stood  forth  as  the  destroy- 
ers of  the  whole  edifice  of  thought  that  had  been  thus  far  built 
until  Socrates  appeared,  and  set  up  against  this  principle  of 
empirical  subjectivity,  that  of  the  absolute  subjectivity, — that  of 
the  spirit  in  the  form  of  a  free  moral  will,  and  the  thought  is  pos- 
itively considered  as  something  higher  than  existence,  as  the 
truth  of  all  reality.  With  the  Sophist  closes  our  first  peri- 
od, for  with  these  the  oldest  philosophy  finds  its  self-destruction 
(Selhstaufldsung). 

*  This  word  literally  means  clearin^j  up,  but  has  a  philosophical  sense  for 
•which  no  precise  equivalent  is  found  in  the  English  language.  When  used 
physically,  it  denotes  that  every  ohstruction  which  prevented  the  clear  sight 
of  the  bodily  eye  is  removed,  and  when  used  psychologically  it  implies  the 
same  fact  in  reference  to  our  mental  vision.  The  AvfUarung  in  philosophy  is 
hence  the  clearing  up  of  difficulties  which  have  hindered  a  true  philosophical 
insight.  To  express  this,  I  know  of  no  better  word  than  the  literal  rendering, 
"  jtp-clearing"  or  clearing  w^,"  which  the  reader  will  find  adopted  in  the  fol- 
lowing pages. — Trakslator. 


THE  IONIC  PHILOSOPHERS. 


21 


SECTION  IV. 

THE  IONIC  PHILOSOPHERS. 

1.  Thales. — At  the  head  of  the  Ionic  natural  philosophers, 
and  therefore  at  the  head  of  philosophy,  the  ancients  are  generally 
agreed  in  placing  Thales  of  Miletus,  a  cotemporary  of  Croesus  and 
Solon ;  although  this  beginning  lies  more  in  the  region  of  tradi- 
tion than  of  history.  The  philosophical  principle  to  which  he 
owes  his  place  in  the  history  of  philosophy  is,  that,  "  the  principle 
(the  primal,  the  original  ground)  of  all  things  is  water ;  from 
water  everything  arises  and  into  water  every  thing  returns."  But 
simply  to  assume  water  as  the  original  ground  of  thing%-  was  not 
to  advance  beyond  his  myth-making  predecessors  and  their  cos- 
mologies. Aristotle,  himself,  when  speaking  of  Thales,  refers  to 
the  old  "  theologians," — meaning,  doubtless.  Homer  and  Hesiod, 
— who  had  ascribed  to  Oceanus  and  Thetis,  the  origin  of  all 
things.  Thales,  however,  merits  his  place  as  the  beginner  of 
philosophy,  because  he  made  the  first  attempt  to  establish  his 
physical  principle,  without  resorting  to  a  mythical  representation, 
and,  therefore,  brought  into  philosophy  a  scientific  procedure. 
He  is  the  first  who  has  placed  his  foot  upon  the  ground  of  a  logical 
{verstdndig)  explanation  of  nature.  We  cannot  now  say  with 
certainty,  how  he  came  to  adopt  his  principle,  though  he  might 
have  been  led  to  it,  by  perceiving  that  dampness  belonged  to  the 
seed  and  nourishment  of  things ;  that  warmth  is  developed  from 
moisture  ;  and  that,  generally,  moisture  might  be  the  plastic,  liv- 
ing and  life-giving  principle.  From  the  condensation  and  expan- 
sion of  this  first  principle,  he  derives,  as  it  seems,  the  changes  of 
things,  though  the  way  in  which  this  is  done,  he  has  not  accurately 
determined. 

The  philosophical  significance  of  Thales  does  not  appear  to 
extend  any  farther.  He  was  not  a  speculative  philosopher  after 
a  later  mode.    Philosophical  book-making  was  not  at  all  the  order 


22 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


of  his  day,  and  he  does  not  seem  to  have  given  any  of  his  opinions 
a  written  form.  On  account  of  his  ethico-political  wisdom,  he  is 
numbered  among  the  so-named  "  seven  wise  men,"  and  the  char- 
acteristics which  the  ancients  furnish  concerning  him  only  testify 
to  his  practical  understanding.  He  is  said  e.  g.  to  have  first  cal- 
culated an  eclipse  of  the  sun,  to  have  superintended  the  turning 
of  the  course  of  the  Halys  under  Croesus,  &c.  When  subsequent 
narrators  relate  that  he  had  asserted  the  unity  of  the  world,  had 
set  up  the  idea  of  a  world-soul,  and  had  taught  the  immortality  of 
the  soul  and  the  personality  of  God,  it  is  doubtless  an  unhistorical 
reference  of  later  ideas  to  a  stand-point,  which  was,  as  yet,  far  from 
being  developed. 

2.  AxAxiMANDER. — Auaximaudcr,  sometimes  represented  by 
the  ancients  as  a  scholar  and  sometimes  as  a  companion  of  Thales, 
but  who  was,  at  all  events,  younger  than  the  latter,  sought  to 
carry  out  still  farther  his  principles.  The  original  essence  which 
he  assumed,  and  which  he  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  to  have 
named  principle  (apx>y),  he  defined  as  the  "  unlimited,  eternal  and 
unconditioned,"  as  that  which  embraced  all  things  and  ruled  all 
things,  and  which,  since  it  lay  at  the  basis  of  all  determinateness 
of  the  finite  and  the  changeable,  is  itself  infinite  and  undeter- 
minate.  How  we  are  to  regard  this  original  essence  of  Anaxi- 
mander  is  a  matter  of  dispute.  Evidently  it  was  not  one  of  the 
four  common  elements,  though  we  must  not,  therefore,  think  it 
was  something  incorporeal  and  immaterial.  Anaximander  proba- 
bly conceived  it  as  the  original  matter  before  it  had  separated 
into  determined  elements, — as  that  which  was  first  in  the  order  of 
time,  or  what  is  in  our  day  called  the  chemical  indifi'erence  in  the 
opposition  of  elements.  In  this  respect  his  original  essence  is 
indeed  "  unlimited  "  and  "  undetermined,"  i.  e.  has  no  determina- 
tion of  quality  nor  limit  of  quantity,  yet  it  is  not,  therefore,  in 
any  way,  a  pure  dynamical  principle,  as  perhaps  the  "  friendship" 
and  "  enmity"  of  Empedocles  might  have  been,  but  it  was  only  a 
more  philosophical  expression  for  the  same  thought,  which  the  old 
cosmogonies  have  attempted  to  utter  in  their  representation  of 
3haos.    Accordingly,  Anaximander  sufiers  the  original  opposition 


THE  IONIC  PHILOSOPHERS. 


23 


of  cold  and  warm,  of  dry  and  moist  {i.  e.  the  basis  of  the  four 
elements)  to  be  secreted  from  bis  original  essence,  a  clear  proof 
that  it  was  only  the  undeveloped,  unanalyzed,  potential  being  of 
these  elemental  opposites. 

3.  Anaximenes. — Anaximenes,  who  is  called  by  some  the 
scholar,  and  by  others  the  companion  of  Anaximander,  turned 
back  more  closely  to  the  view  of  Thales,  in  that  he  made  air  as 
the  principle  of  all  things.  The  perception  that  air  surrounds 
the  whole  world,  and  that  breath  conditions  the  activity  of  life, 
seems  to  have  led  him  to  his  position. 

4.  Retrospect. — The  whole  philosophy  of  the  three  Ionic 
sages  may  be  reduced  to  these  three  points,  viz: — (1.)  They 
sought  for  the  universal  essence  of  concrete  being;  (2.)  They 
found  this  essence  in  a  material  substance  or  substratum ;  (3.) 
They  gave  some  intimation  respecting  the  derivation  of  the  ele- 
ments from  this  original  matter. 


SECTION  V. 

PYTHAGOREANISM. 

1.  Its  Relative  Position. — The  development  of  the  Ionic 
philosophy  discloses  the  tendency  to  abstract  matter  from  all  else; 
though  they  directed  this  process  solely  to  the  determined  quality 
of  matter.  It  is  this  abstraction  carried  to  a  higher  step,  when 
we  look  away  from  the  sensible  concretions  of  matter,  and  no 
more  regard  its  qualitative  determinateness  as  water,  air,  &c.,  but 
only  direct  our  attention  to  its  quantitative  determinateness, — to 
its  space-filling  property.  But  the  determinateness  of  quantity  is 
number,  and  this  is  the  principle  and  stand-point  of  Pythagorean- 
ism. 

2.  Historical  and  Chronological. — The  Pythagorean  doc- 
trine of  numbers  is  referred  to  Pythagoras  of  Samos,  who  is  said 
to  have  flourished  between  540  and  500  B.  C.    He  dwelt  in  the 


24 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


latter  part  of  his  life  at  Crotonia,  in  Magna  Grecia,  where  he 
founded  a  society,  or,  more  properly,  an  order,  for  the  moral  and 
political  regeneration  of  the  lower  Italian  cities.  Through  this 
society,  this  new  direction  of  philosophy  seems  to  have  been 
introduced, — though  more  as  a  mode  of  life  than  in  the  form  of  a 
scientific  theory.  What  is  related  concerning  the  life  of  Pytha- 
goras, his  journeys,  the  new  order  which  he  founded,  his  political 
influence  upon  the  lower  Italian  cities,  &c.,  is  so  thoroughly  inter- 
woven with  traditions,  legends,  and  palpable  fabrications,  that  we 
can  be  certain  at  no  point  that  we  stand  upon  a  historical  basis. 
Not  only  the  old  Pythagoreans,  who  have  spoken  of  him,  de- 
lighted in  the  mysterious  and  esoteric,  but  even  his  new-Plato- 
nistic  biographers.  Porphyry  and  Jamblichus,  have  treated  his 
life  as  a  historico-philosophical  romance.  We  have  the  same  un- 
certainty in  reference  to  his  doctrines,  i.  e.  in  reference  to  his 
share  in  the  number-theory.  Aristotle,  e.  g.  does  not  ascribe 
this  to  Pythagoras  himself,  but  only  to  the  Pythagoreans  gene- 
rally, i.  e.  to  their  school.  The  accounts  which  are  given  respect- 
ing his  school  have  no  certainty  till  the  time  of  Socrates,  a  hundred 
years  after  Pythagoras.  Among  the  few  sources  of  light  which 
we  have  upon  this  subject,  are  the  mention  made  in  Plato's  Phae- 
don  of  the  Pythagorean  Philolaus  and  his  doctrines,  and  the 
writings  of  Archytas,  a  cotemporary  of  Plato.  We  possess  in 
fact  the  Pythagorean  doctrine  only  in  the  manner  in  which  it  was 
taken  up  by  Philolaus,  Eurytas  and  Archytas,  since  its  earlier 
adherents  left  nothing  in  a  written  form. 

3.  The  Pythagorean  Principle. — The  ancients  are  united 
in  affirming  that  the  principle  of  the  Pythagorean  philosophy  was 
number.  But  in  what  sense  was  this  their  principle — in  a  material 
or  a  formal  sense  ?  Did  they  hold  number  as  the  material  of 
things,  i.  e.  did  they  believe  that  things  had  their  origin  in  num- 
bers, or  did  they  regard  it  as  the  archetype  of  things,  i.  e.  did 
they  believe  that  things  were  made  as  the  copy  or  the  representa- 
tion of  numbers  ?  From  this  very  point  the  accounts  given  by 
the  ancients  diverge,  and  even  the  expressions  of  Aristotle  seem 
to  contradict  each  other.   At  one  time  he  speaks  of  Pythagorean- 


PYTHAGOREANISM. 


25 


ism  in  the  former,  and  at  another  in  the  latter  sense.  From  this 
circumstance  modern  scholars  have  concluded  that  the  Pytha- 
gorean doctrine  of  numbers  had  different  forms  of  development ; 
that  some  of  the  Pythagoreans  regarded  numbers  as  the  substances 
and  others  as  the  archetypes  of  things.  Aristotle,  however, 
gives  an  intimation  how  the  two  statements  may  be  reconciled 
with  each  other.  Originally,  without  doubt,  the  Pythagoreans 
regarded  number  as  the  material,  as  the  inherent  essence  of 
things,  and  therefore  Aristotle  places  them  together  with  the 
Hylics  (the  Ionic  natural  philosophers),  and  says  of  them  that 
"  they  held  things  for  numbers  "  (Metaph.  I.,  5,  6).  But  as  the 
Hylics  did  not  identify  their  matter,  e.  g.  water,  immediately  with 
the  sensuous  thing,  but  only  gave  it  out  as  the  fundamental  ele- 
ment, as  the  original  form  of  the  individual  thing,  so,  on  the  other 
side,  numbers  also  might  be  regarded  as  similar  fundamental  types, 
and  therefore  Aristotle  might  say  of  the  Pythagoreans,  that 
"  they  held  numbers  to  be  the  corresponding  original  forms  of 
being,  as  water,  air,  &c."  But  if  there  still  remains  a  degree  of 
uncertainty  in  the  expressions  of  Aristotle  respecting  the  sense 
of  the  Pythagorean  doctrine  of  numbers,  it  can  only  have  its 
ground  in  the  fact  that  the  Pythagoreans  did  not  make  any  dis- 
tinction between  a  formal  and  material  principle,  but  contented 
themselves  with  the  undeveloped  view,  that,  "  number  is  the  essence 
of  things,  every  thing  is  number." 

4.  The  carrying-  out  of  this  Principle. — From  the  very 
nature  of  the  "  number-principle,"  it  follows  that  its  complete  ap- 
plication to  the  province  of  the  real,  can  only  lead  to  a  fruitless 
and  empty  symbolism.  If  we  take  numbers  as  even  and  odd,  and 
still  farther  as  finite  and  infinite,  and  apply  them  as  such  to 
astronomy,  music,  psychology,  ethics,  &c.,  there  arise  combina- 
tions like  the  following,  viz. :  one  is  the  point,  two  are  the  line, 
three  are  the- superficies,  four  are  the  extension  of  a  body,  five 
are  the  condition  [heschaffe^iheit),  &c. — still  farther,  the  soul  is  a 
musical  harmony,  as  is  also  virtue,  the  soul  of  the  world,  &c.  Not 
only  the  philosophical,  but  even  the  historical  interest  here  ceases, 
since  the  ancients  themselves — as  was  unavoidable  from  the 
2 


26 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


arbitrary  nature  of  such  combinations — ^bave  given  the  most  con- 
tradictory account,  some  affirming  that  the  Pythagoreans  reduced 
righteousness  to  the  number  three,  others,  that  they  reduced  it  to 
the  number  four,  others  again  to  five,  and  still  others  to  nine. 
Naturally,  from  such  a  vague  and  arbitrary  philosophizing,  there 
would  early  arise,  in  this,  more  than  in  other  schools,  a  great 
diversity  of  views,  one  ascribing  this  signification  to  a  certain 
mathematical  form,  and  another  that.  In  this  mysticism  of  num- 
bers, that  which  alone  has  truth  and  value,  is  the  thought,  which 
lies  at  the  ground  of  it  all,  that  there  prevails  in  the  phenomena 
of  nature  a  rational  order,  harmony  and  conformity  to  law,  and 
that  these  laws  of  nature  can  be  represented  in  measure  and 
number.  But  this  truth  has  the  Pythagorean  school  hid  under 
extravagant  fancies,  as  vapid  as  they  are  unbridled. 

The  physics  of  the  Pythagoreans  possesses  little  scientific 
value,  with  the  exception  of  the  doctrine  taught  by  Philolaus 
respecting  the  circular  motion  of  the  earth.  Their  ethics  is  also 
defective.  What  we  have  remaining  of  it  relates  more  to  the 
Pythagorean  life,  i.  e.  to  the  practice  and  discipline  of  their  order 
than  to  their  philosophy.  The  whole  tendency  of  Pythagoreanism 
was  in  a  practical  respect  ascetic,  and  directed  to  a  strict  culture 
of  the  character.  As  showing  this,  we  need  only  to  cite  their 
doctrines  concerning  the  transmigration  of  the  soul,  or,  as  it  has 
been  called,  their  "  immortality  doctrine,"  their  notion  in  respect 
of  the  lower  world,  their  opposition  to  suicide,  and  their  view  of 
the  body  as  the  prison  of  the  soul — all  of  which  ideas  are  referred 
to  in  Plato's  Phaedon,  and  the  last  two  of  which  are  indicated  as 
belonging  to  Philolaus. 


THE  ELEATICS. 


27 


SECTION  YI 

THE  ELEATICS. 

1.  Relation  of  the  Eleatic  Principle  to  the  Pythago- 
rean.— Wliile  the  Pythagoreans  had  made  matter,  in  so  far  as  it 
is  quantity  and  the  manifold,  the  basis  of  their  philosophizing, 
and  while  in  this  they  only  abstracted  from  the  determined  ele- 
mental condition  of  matter,  the  Eleatics  carry  the  process  to  its 
ultimate  limit,  and  make,  as  the  principle  of  their  philosophy,  a 
total  abstraction  from  every  finite  determinateness,  from  every 
change  and  vicissitude  which  belongs  to  concrete  being.  While 
the  Pythagoreans  had  held  fast  to  the  form  of  being  as  having 
existence  in  space  and  time,  the  Eleatics  reject  this,  and  make  as 
their  fundamental  thought  the  negation  of  all  exterior  and  pos- 
terior. Only  being  is,  and  there  is  no  not-being,  nor  becoming. 
This  being  is  the  purely  undetermined,  changeless  ground  of  all 
things.  It  is  not  being  in  becoming,  but  it  is  being  as  exclusive 
of  all  becoming ;  in  other  words,  it  is  pure  being. 

Eleaticism  is,  therefore,  Monism,  in  so  far  as  it  strove  to 
carry,  back  the  manifoldness  of  all  being  to  a  single  ultimate 
principle ;  but  on  the  other  hand  it  becomes  Dualism,  in  so  far 
as  it  could  neither  carry  out  its  denial  of  concrete  existence,  i.  e., 
the  phenomenal  world,  nor  yet  derive  the  latter  from  its  presup- 
posed original  ground.  The  phenomenal  world,  though  it  might 
be  explained  as  only  an  empty  appearance,  did  yet  exist ;  and, 
since  the  sensuous  perception  would  not  ignore  this,  there  must 
be  allowed  it,  hypothetically  at  least,  the  right  of  existence.  Its 
origin  must  be  explained,  even  though  with  reservations.  This 
contradiction  of  an  unreconciled  Dualism  between  being  and  ex- 
istence, is  the  point  where  the  Eleatic  philosophy  is  at  war  with 
itself — though,  in  the  beginning  of  the  school — with  Xenoptianes^ 
it  does  not  yet  appear.  The  principle  itself,  with  its  results,  is 
only  fully  apparent  in  the  lapse  of  time.    It  has  three  periods 


28 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


of  formation,  whicli  successively  appear  in  three  successive  gen- 
erations. Its  foundation  belongs  to  Xenoplianes  ;  its  systematic 
formation  to  Parmenides  ;  its  completion  and  partial  dissolution 
to  Zeno  and  Melissus — tlie  latter  of  whom  we  can  pass  by. 

2.  Xenophanes. — Xenopbanes  is  considered  as  the  originator 
of  the  Eleatic  tendency.  He  was  born  at  Colophon  ;  emigrated 
to  Elea,  a  Phocian  colony  in  Lucania,  and  was  a  younger  cotem- 
porary  of  Pythagoras.  He  appears  to  have  first  uttered  the 
proposition — "  every  thing  is  one,"  without,  however,  giving  any 
more  explicit  determination  respecting  this  unity,  whether  it  be 
one  simply  in  conception  or  in  actuality.  Turning  his  attention, 
says  Aristotle,  upon  the  world  as  a  whole,  he  names  the  unity 
which  he  finds,  Grod.  God  is  the  One.  The  Eleatic  "  One  and 
All "  {%v  KOL  irav)  had,  therefore,  with  Xenophanes,  a  theological 
and  religious  character.  The  idea  of  the  unity  of  God,  and  an 
opposition  to  the  anthropomorphism  of  the  ordinary  views  of  re- 
ligion, is  his  starting  point.  He  declaimed  against  the  delusion 
that  the  gods  were  born,  that  they  had  a  human  voice  or  form, 
and  railed  at  the  robbery,  adultery,  and  deceit  of  the  gods  as 
sung  by  Homer  and  Hesiod.  According  to  him  the  Godhead  is 
wholly  seeing,  wholly  understanding,  wholly  hearing,  unmoved, 
undivided,  calmly  ruling  all  things  by  his  thought,  like  men 
neither  in  form  nor  in  understanding.  In  this  way,  with  his 
thought  turned  only  towards  removing  from  the  Godhead  all 
finite  determinations  and  predicates,  and  holding  fast  to  its  unity 
and  unchangeableness,  he  declared  this  doctrine  of  its  being  to 
be  the  highest  philosophical  principle,  without  however  directing 
this  principle  polemically  against  the  doctrine  of  finite  being,  or 
carrying  it  out  in  its  negative  application. 

3.  Par]\ienides. — The  proper  head  of  the  Eleatic  school  is 
Parmenides  of  Elea,  a  scholar,  or  at  least  an  adherent  of  Xeno- 
phanes. Though  we  possess  but  little  reliable  information  re- 
specting the  circumstances  of  his  life,  yet  we  have,  in  inverse 
proportion,  the  harmonious  voice  of  all  antiquity  in  an  expression 
of  reverence  for  the  Eleatic  sage,  and  of  admiration  for  the 
depth  of  his  mind,  as  well  as  for  the  earnestness  and  elevation 


THE  ELEATICS. 


29 


of  his  character.  The  saying — "  a  life  like  Parmenides,"  became 
afterwards  a  proverb  among  the  Greeks. 

Parmenides  embodied  his  philosophy  in  an  epic  poem,  of 
which  we  have  still  important  fragments.  It  is  divided  into  two 
parts.  In  the  first  he  discusses  the  conception  of  being.  Rising 
far  above  the  yet  unmediated  view  of  Xenophanes,  he  attains  a 
conception  of  pure  single  being,  which  he  sets  up  as  absolutely 
opposed  to  every  thing  manifold  and  changeable,  i.  e.,  to  that 
which  has  no  being,  and  which  consequently  cannot  be  thought. 
From  this  conception  of  being  he  not  only  excludes  all  becoming 
and  departing,  but  also  all  relation  to  space  and  time,  all  divisi- 
bility and  movement.  This  being  he  explains  as  something 
which  has  not  become  and  which  does  not  depart,  as  complete 
and  of  its  own  kind,  as  unalterable  and  without  limit,  as  indivisi- 
ble and  present  though  not  in  time,  and  since  all  these  are  only 
negative,  he  ascribes  to  it,  also,  as  a  positive  determination — 
thought.  Being  and  thought  are  therefore  identical  with  Par- 
menides. This  pure  thought,  directed  to  the  pure  being,  he  de- 
clares is  the  only  true  and  undeceptive  knowledge,  in  opposition 
to  the  deceptive  notions  concerning  the  manifoldnessL  and  muta- 
bility of  -  the  phenomenal.  He  has  no  hesitancy  in  holding  that 
to  be  only  a  name  which  mortals  regard  as  truth,  viz.,  becoming 
and  departing,  being  and  not-being,  change  of  place  and  vicissi- 
tude of  circumstance.  We  must  therefore  be  careful  not  to  hold 
"  the  One  "  of  Parmenides,  as  the  collective  unity  of  all  concrete 
being. 

So  much  for  the  first  part  of  Parmenides'  poem.  After  the 
principle  that  there  is  only  being  has  been  developed  according 
to  its  negative  and  positive  determinations,  we  might  believe  that 
the  system  was  at  an  end.  But  there  follows  a  second  part, 
which  is  occupied  solely  with  the  hypothetical  attempt  to  explain 
the  phenomenal  world  and  give  it  a  physical  derivation.  Though 
firmly  convinced  that,  according  to  reason  and  conception,  there 
is  only  "  the  One,"  yet  is  Parmenides  unable  to  withdraw  him- 
self from  the  recognition  of  an  appearing  manifoldness  and 
change.    Forced,  therefore,  by  his  sensuous  perception  to  enter 


30 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


upon  a  discussion  of  the  phenomenal  world,  he  prefaces  this  sec- 
ond part  of  his  poem  with  the  remark,  that  he  had  now  closed 
what  he  had  to  say  respecting  the  truth,  and  was  hereafter  to 
deal  only  with  the  opinion  of  a  mortal.  Unfortunately,  this  sec- 
ond part  has  been  very  imperfectly  transmitted  to  us.  Enough 
however  remains  to  show,  that  he  explained  the  phenomena  of 
nature  from  the  mingling  of  two  unchangeable  elements,  which 
Aristotle,  though  apparently  only  by  way  of  example,  indicates 
as  warm  and  cold,  fire  and  earth.  Concerning  these  two  ele- 
ments, Aristotle  remarks  still  farther  that  Parmenides  united  the 
warmth  with  being,  and  the  other  element  with  not-being. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  remark  that  between  the  two  parts 
of  the  Parmenidean  philosophy — between  the  doctrine  concern- 
ing being  and  the  doctrine  concerning  appearance — there  can  ex- 
ist no  inner  scientific  connection.  What  Parmenides  absolutely 
denies  in  the  first  part,  and  indeed  declares  to  be  unutterable, 
viz.,  the  not-being,  the  many  and  the  changeable,  he  yet  in  the 
second  part  admits  to  have  an  existence  at  least  in  the  represen- 
tation of  men.  But  it  is  clear  that  the  not-being  cannot  once 
exist  in  the  representation,  if  it  does  not  exist  generally  and 
every  where,  and  that  the  attempt  to  explain  a  not-being  of  the 
representation,  is  in  complete  contradiction  with  his  exclusive 
recognition  of  being.  This  contradiction,  this  unmediated  jux- 
taposition of  being  and  not-being,  of  the  one  and  the  many,  Zeno^ 
a  scholar  of  Parmenides,  sought  to  remove,  by  affirming  that 
from  the  very  conception  of  being,  the  sensuous  representation, 
and  thus  the  world  of  the  not-being,  are  dialectically  annihilated. 

4.  Zexo. — The  Eleatic  Zeno  was  born  about  500  B.  C. ;  was 
a  scholar  of  Parmenides,  and  the  earliest  prose  writer  among  the 
Grecian  philosophers.  He  is  said  to  have  written  in  the  form  of 
dialogues.  He  perfected,  dialectically,  the  doctrine  of  his  mas- 
ter, and  carried  out  to  the  completest  extent  the  abstraction  of 
the  Eleatic  One,  in  opposition  to  the  manifoldness  and  determi- 
nateness  of  the  finite.  He  justified  the  doctrine  of  a  single,  sim- 
ple, and  unchangeable  being,  in  a  polemical  way,  by  showing  up 
the  contradictions  into  which  the  ordinary  representations  of  the 


HERACLITUS. 


81 


phenomenal  world  become  involved.  While  Parmenides  affirms 
that  there  is  only  the  One,  Zeno  shows  in  his  well-known  proofs 
(which  unfortunately  we  cannot  here  more  widely  unfold),  that 
the  many,  the  changing,  that  which  has  relation  to  space,  or  that 
which  has  relation  to  time,  is  not.  While  Parmenides  affirmed 
the  being,  Zeno  denied  the  appearance.  On  account  of  these 
proofs,  in  which  Zeno  takes  up  the  conceptions  of  extension, 
manifoldness  and  movement,  and  shows  their  inner  contradictory 
nature,  Aristotle  names  him  the  founder  of  dialectics. 

While  the  philosophizing  of  Zeno  is  the  completion  of  the 
Eleatic  principle,  so  is  it  at  the  same  time  the  beginning  of  its 
dissolution.  Zeno  had  embraced  the  opposition  of  being  and  ex- 
istence, of  the  one  and  the  many,  so  abstractly,  and  had  carried 
it  so  far,  that  with  him  the  inner  contradiction  of  the  Eleatic 
principle  comes  forth  still  more  boldly  than  with  Parmenides ; 
fcTi.  the  more  logical  he  is  in  the  denial  of  the  phenomenal  world, 
so  much  the  more  striking  must  be  the  contradiction,  of  turning, 
on  the  one  side,  his  whole  philosophical  activity  to  the  refutation 
of  the  sensuous  representation,  while,  on  the  other  side,  he  sets 
over  against  it  a  doctrine  which  destroys  the  very  possibility  of  a 
false  representation. 


SECTION  YII. 

HERACLITUS. 

1.  Relation  of  the  Heraclitic  Pe.inciple  to  the  Ele-  \ 
ATic. — ^Being  and  existence,  the  one  and  the  many,  could  not  be 
united  by  the  principle  of  the  Eleatics ;  the  Monism  which  they 
had  striven  for  had  resulted  in  an  ill-concealed  Dualism.  He- 
raclitus  reconciled  this  contradiction  by  affirming  that  being  and  - 
not-being,  the  one  and  the  many,  existed  at  the  same  time  as  the 
becoming.  While  the  Eleatics  could  not  extricate  themselves 
from  the  dilemma  that  the  worlcj  is  either  being  or  not-being; 


82 


A  mSTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


Heraclitus  removes  the  difficulty  by  answering — it  is  neither  be- 
ing nor  not-being,  because  it  is  both. 

2.  Historical  and  Chronological. — Heraclitus,  surnamed 
by  later  writers  the  mystic,  was  born  at  Ephesus,  and  flourished 
about  500  B.  C.  His  period  was  subsequent  to  that  of  Xeno- 
phanes,  though  partially  cotemporary  with  that  of  Parmenides. 
He  laid  down  his  philosophical  thoughts  in  a  writing  "  Concern- 
ing Nature,"  of  which  we  possess  only  fragments.  Its  rapid 
transitions,  its  expressions  so  concise,  and  full  of  meaning,  the 
general  philosophical  peculiarity  of  Heraclitus,  and  the  antique 
character  of  the  earliest  prose  writings,  all  combine  to  make  this 
work  so  difficult  to  be  understood  that  it  has  long  been  a  proverb. 
Socrates  said  concerning  it,  that  "  what  he  understood  of  it  was 
excellent,  and  he  had  no  doubt  that  what  he  did  not  understand 
was  equally  good ;  but  the  book  requires  an  expert  swimmer." 
Later  Stoics  and  Academicians  have  written  commentaries 
upon  it. 

3,  The  Principle  of  the  Becoming. — The  ancients  unite  in 
ascribing  to  Heraclitus  the  principle  that  the  totality  of  things 
should  be  conceived  in  an  eternal  flow,  in  an  uninterrupted  move- 
ment and  transformation,  and  that  all  continuance  of  things  is 
only  appearance.  "  Into  the  same  stream,"  so  runs  a  saying  of 
Heraclitus,  we  descend,  and  at  the  same  time  we  do  not  de- 
scend ;  we  are,  and  also  we  are  not.  For  into  the  same  stream 
we  cannot  possibly  descend  twice,  since  it  is  always  scattering 
and  collecting  itself  again,  or  rather  it  at  the  same  time  flows  to 
us  and  from  us."  There  is,  therefore,  ground  for  the  assertion 
that  Heraclitus  had  banished  all  rest  and  continuance  from  the 
totality  of  things ;  and  it  is  doubtless  in  this  very  respect  that  he 
accuses  the  eye  and  the  ear  of  deception,  because  they  reveal  to 
men  a  continuance  where  there  is  only  an  uninterrupted  change. 

Heraclitus  has  analyzed  the  principle  of  the  becoming  still 
more  closely,  in  the  propositions  which  he  utters,  to  accounc  for 
the  origin  of  things,  where  he  shows  that  all  becoming  must  be 
conceived  as  the  product  of  warring  opposites,  as  the  harmonious 
tinion  of  opposite  determinations.     Hence  his  two  well-known 


HERACLITUS. 


3P 


propositions :  "  Strife  is  the  father  of  things,"  and  "  The  One 
setting  itself  at  variance  with  itself,  harmonizes  with  itself,  like 
the  harmony  of  the  bow  and  the  viol."  "  Unite,"  so  runs  another 
of  his  sayings,  "  the  whole  and  the  not-whole,  the  coalescing  and 
the  not-coalescing,  the  harmonious  and  the  discordant,  and  thus 
we  have  the  one  becoming  from  the  all,  and  the  all  from  the 
one." 

4.  The  Principle  of  Fire. — In  what  relation  does  the  prin- 
ciple of  fire,  which  is  also  ascribed  to  Heraclitus,  stand  to  the 
principle  of  the  becoming  ?  Aristotle  says  that  he  took  fire  as 
his  principle,  in  the  same  way  that  Thales  took  water,  and  Anax- 
imenes  took  air.  But  it  is  clear  we  must  not  interpret  this  to 
mean  that  Heraclitus  regarded  fire  as  the  original  material  or 
fundamental  element  of  things,  after  the  manner  of  the  Ionics. 
If  he  ascribed  reality  only  to  the  becoming,  it  is  impossible  ,that 
he  should  have  set  by  the  side  of  this  becoming,  yet  another  ele- 
mental matter  as  a  fundamental  substance.  When,  therefore, 
Heraclitus  calls  the  world  an  ever-living  fire,  which  in  certain 
stages  and  certain  degrees  extinguishes  and  again  enkindles  itself, 
when  he  says  that  every  thing  can  be  exchanged  for  fire,  and  fire 
for  every  thing,  just  as  we  barter  things  for  gold  and  gold  for 
things,  he  can  only  mean  thereby  that  fire  represents  the  abiding 
power  of  this  eternal  transformation  and  transposition,  in  other 
words,  the  conception  of  life,  in  the  most  obvious  and  efi"ective 
way.  We  might  name  fire,  in  the  Heraclitic  sense,  the  symbol 
or  the  manifestation  of  the  becoming,  but  that  it  is  also  with  him 
the  substratum  of  movement,  i.  e.  the  means  with  which  the 
power  of  movement,  which  is  antecedent  to  all  matter,  serves  it 
self  in  order  to  bring  out  the  living  process  of  things.  In  the 
same  way  Heraclitus  goes  on  to  explain  the  manifoldness  of 
things,  by  affirming  that  they  arise  from  certain  hindrances  and 
a  partial  extinction  of  this  fire.  The  product  of  its  extremest 
hindrance  is  the  earth,  and  the  other  things  lie  intermediately 
between. 

6.  Transition  to  the  Atomists. — We  have  above  regarded 

the  Heraclitic  principle  as  the  consequent  of  the  Eleatic,  but  we 
o* 


34 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


might  as  properly  consider  the  two  as  antitheses.  While  Herar 
clitus  destroys  all  abiding  being  in  an  absolutely  flowing  becoming, 
so,  on  the  other  hand,  Parmenides  destroys  all  becoming  in  an 
absolutely  abiding  being ;  and  while  the  former  charges  the  eye 
and  the  ear  with  deception,  in  that  they  transform  the  flowing 
becoming  into  a  quiescent  being,  the  latter  also  accuses  these 
same  senses  of  an  untrue  representation,  in  that  they  draw  the 
abiding  being  into  the  movement  of  the  becoming.  We  can 
therefore  say  that  the  being  and  the  becoming  are  equally  valid 
antitheses,  which  demand  again  a  synthesis  and  reconciliation. 
But  now  can  we  say  that  Heraclitus  actually  and  satisfactorily 
solved  the  problem  of  Zeno  ?  Zeno  had  shown  every  thing  actual 
to  be  a  contradiction,  and  from  this  had  inferred  their  not-being, 
and  it  is  only  in  this  inference  that  Heraclitus  deviates  from  the 
Eleatics.  He  also  regarded  the  phenomenal  world  as  an  existing 
contradiction,  but  he  clung  to  this  contradiction  as  to  an  ultimate 
fact.  That  which  had  been  the  negative  result  of  the  Eleatics, 
he  uttered  as  his  positive  principle.  The  dialectics  which  Zeno 
had  subjectively  used  against  the  phenomenal,  he  directed  objec- 
tively as  a  proof  for  the  becoming.  But  this  becoming  which  the 
Eleatics  had  thought  themselves  obliged  to  deny  entirely,  Hera- 
clitus did  not  explain  by  simply  asserting  that  it  was  the  only 
true  principle.  The  question  continually  returned — why  is  all 
being  a  becoming?  Why  does  the  one  go  out  ever  into  the 
many  ?  To  give  an  answer  to  this  question,  i.  e.  to  explain  the 
becoming  from  the  pre-supposed  principle  of  being,  forms  the 
stand-point  and  problem  of  the  Empedoclean  and  Atomistic 
philosophy. 


EMPEDOCLES. 


85 


SECTION  VIII. 

EMPEDOCLES. 

1.  General  View. — Empedocles  was  born  at  Agrigentum, 
and  is  extolled  by  the  ancients  as  a  natural  philosopher,  physician 
and  poet,  and  also  as  a  seer  and  worker  of  miracles.  He  flourished 
about  440  B.  C,  and  was  consequently  younger  than  Parmenides 
and  Heraclitus.  He  wrote  a  doctrinal  poem  concerning  nature, 
which  has  been  preserved  to  us  in  tolerably  complete  fragments. 
His  philosophical  system  may  be  characterized  in  brief,  as  an 
attempt  to  combine  the  Eleatic  being  and  the  Heraclitic  becom- 
ing. Starting  with  the  Eleatic  thought,  that  neither  any  thing 
which  had  previously  been  could  become,  nor  any  thing  which 
now  is  could  depart,  he  sets  up  as  unchangeable  being,  four 
eternal  original  materials,  which,  though  divisible,  were  indepen- 
dent, and  underived  from  each  other.  In  this  we  have  what  in 
our  day  are  called  the  four  elements.  With  this  Eleatic  thought 
he  united  also  the  Heraclitic  view  of  nature,  and  suffered  his  four 
elements  to  become  mingled  together,  and  to  receive  a  form  by 
the  working  of  two  moving  powers,  which  he  names  unifying 
friendship  and  dividing  strife.  Originally,  these  four  elements 
were  absolutely  alike  and  unmovable,  dwelling  together  in  a  di- 
vine sphere  where  friendship  united  them,  until  gradually  strife 
pressing  from  the  circumference  to  the  centre  of  the  sphere  {i.  e. 
attaining  a  separating  activity),  broke  this  union,  and  the  forma- 
tion of  the  world  immediately  began  as  the  result. 

2.  The  Four  Elements. — With  his  doctrine  of  the  four  ele- 
ments, Empedocles,  on  the  one  side,  may  be  joined  to  the  series 
of  the  Ionic  philosophers,  but,  on  the  other,  he  is  excluded  from 
this  by  his  assuming  the  original  elements  to  be  four.  He  is  dis- 
tinctly said  by  the  ancients  to  have  originated  the  theory  of  the 
four  elements.  He  is  more  definitely  distinguished  from  the  old 
Ionics,  from  the  fact  that  he  ascribed  to  his  four  "  root-elements" 
a  changeless  being,  by  virtue  of  which  they  neither  arose  from 


36 


A  fflSTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


each  other  nor  departed  into  each  other,  and  were  capable  of  no 
change  of  essence  but  only  of  a  change  of  state.  Every  thing 
which  is  called  arising  and  departing,  every  change  rests  there- 
fore only  upon  the  mingling  and  withdrawing  of  these  eternal  and 
fundamental  materials ;  the  inexhaustible  manifoldness  of  being 
rests  upon  the  different  proportions  in  which  these  elements  are 
mingled.  Every  becoming  is  conceived  as  such  only  as  a  change 
of  place.  In  this  we  have  a  mechanical  in  opposition  to  a  dynamic 
explanation  of  nature. 

3.  The  Two  Powers. — "Whence  now  can  arise  any  becoming, 
if  in  matter  itself  there  is  found  no  principle  to  account  for  the 
change  ?  Since  Empedocles  did  not,  like  the  Eleatics,  deny  that 
there  was  change,  nor  yet,  like  Heraclitus,  introduce  it  in  his 
matter,  as  an  indwelling  principle,  so  there  was  no  other  course 
left  him  but  to  place,  by  the  side  of  his  matter,  a  moving  power. 
The  opposition  of  the  one  and  the  many  which  had  been  set  up  by 
his  predecessors,  and  which  demanded  an  explanation,  led  him  to 
ascribe  to  this  moving  power,  two  originally  diverse  directions, 
viz. :  repulsion  and  attraction.  The  separation  of  the  one  into 
the  many,  and  the  union  again  of  the  many  into  the  one,  had  in- 
dicated an  opposition  of  powers  which  Heraclitus  had  already 
recognized.  While  now  Parmenides  starting  from  the  one  had 
made  love  as  his  principle,  and  Heraclitus  starting  from  the  many 
had  made  strife  as  his,  Empedocles  combines  the  two  as  the  prin- 
ciple of  his  philosophy.  The  difficulty  is,  he  has  not  sufficiently 
limited  in  respect  to  one  another,  the  sphere  of  operation  of  these 
two  directions  of  his  power.  Although  to  friendship  belonged 
peculiarly  the  attractive,  and  to  strife  the  repelling  function,  yet 
does  Empedocles,  on  the  other  hand,  suffer  his  strife  to  have  in 
the  formation  of  the  world  a  unifying,  and  his  friendship  a  dividing 
effect.  In  fact,  the  complete  separation  of  a  dividing  and  unify- 
ing power  in  the  movement  of  the  becoming,  is  an  unmaintainable 
abstraction. 

4.  Relation  of  the  Empedoclean  to  the  Eleatic  and 
Heraclitic  Philosophy. — Empedocles,  by  placing,  as  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  becoming,  a  moving  power  by  the  side  of  his  matter, 


THE  ATOMISTIC  PHILOSOPHY. 


37 


makes  his  philosopliy  a  mediation  of  the  Eleatic  and  Heraclitic 
principles,  or  more  properly  a  placing  of  them  side  by  side.  He 
has  interwoven  these  two  principles  in  equal  proportions  in  his 
system.  With  the  Eleatics  he  denied  all  arising  and  departing, 
i.  e.  the  transition  of  being  into  not-being  and  of  not-being  into 
being,  and  with  Heraclitus  he  shared  the  interest  to  find  an  ex- 
planation for  change.  From  the  former  he  derived  the  abiding, 
unchangeable  being  of  his  fundamental  matter,  and  from  the  latter 
the  principle  of  the  moving  power.  With  the  Eleatics,  in  fine,  he 
considered  the  true  being  in  an  original  and  undistinguishable 
unity  as  a  sphere,  and  with  Heraclitus,  he  regarded  the  present 
world  as  a  constant  product  of  striving  powers  and  oppositions. 
He  has,  therefore,  been  properly  called  an  Eclectic,  who  has 
united  the  fundamental  thoughts  of  his  two  predecessors,  though 
not  always  in  a  logical  way. 


SECTION  IX. 

THE  ATOMISTIC  PHILOSOPHY. 

1.  Its  Propounders. — Empedocles  had  sought  to  effect  a 
combination  of  the  Eleatic  and  Heraclitic  principle — the  same 
was  attempted,  though  in  a  different  way,  by  the  Atomists,  Leu- 
oippus  and  Democritus.  Democritus,  the  better  known  of  the 
two,  was  the  son  of  rich  parents,  and  was  born  about  460  B.  C.  in 
Abdera,  an  Ionian  colony.  He  travelled  extensively,  and  no 
Greek  before  the  time  of  Aristotle  possessed  such  varied  attain- 
ments. He  embodied  the  wealth  of  his  collected  knowledge  in  a 
series  of  writings,  of  which,  however,  only  a  few  fragments  have 
come  down  to  us.  For  rhythm  and  elegance  of  language,  Cicero 
compared  him  with  Plato.    He  died  in  a  good  old  age. 

2.  The  Atoms. — Empedocles  derived  all  determinateness  of 
the  phenomenal  from  a  certain  number  of  qualitatively  determined 
and  undistinguishable  original  materials,  while  the  Atomists  de- 


38 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


rived  the  same  from  an  originally  unlimited  number  of  constituent 
elements,  or  atoms,  which  were  homogeneous  in  respect  of  quality, 
but  diverse  in  respect  of  form.  These  atoms  are  unchangeable, 
material  particles,  possessing  indeed  extension,  but  yet  indivisible, 
and  can  only  be  determined  in  respect  of  magnitude.  As  being, 
and  without  quality,  they  are  entirely  incapable  of  any  transfor- 
mation or  qualitative  change,  and,  therefore,  all  becoming  is,  as 
with  Empedocles,  only  a  change  of  place.  The  manifoldness  of 
the  phenomenal  world  is  only  to  be  explained  from  the  different 
form,  disposition,  and  arrangement  of  the  atoms  as  they  become, 
in  various  ways,  united. 

3.  The  Fulness  and  the  Yoid. — The  atoms,  in  order  to 
be  atoms,  i.  e.  undivided  and  impenetrable  unities, — must  be 
mutually  limited  and  separated.  There  must  be  something  set 
over  against  them  which  preserves  them  as  atoms,  and  which  is 
the  original  cause  of  their  separateness  and  impenetrability.  This 
is  the  void  space,  or  more  strictly  the  intervals  which  are  found 
between  the  atoms,  and  which  hinder  their  mutual  contact.  .The 
atoms,  as  being  and  absolute  fulness,  and  the  interval  between 
them,  as  the  void  and  the  not-being,  are  two  determinations  which 
only  represent  in  a  real  and  objective  way,  what  are  in  thought, 
as  logical  conceptions,  the  two  elements  in  the  Heraclitic  becom- 
ing, viz.  being  and  the  not-being.  But  since  the  void  space  is  one 
determination  of  being,  it  must  possess  objective  reality  no  less 
than  the  atoms,  and  Democritus  even  went  so  far  as  to  expressly 
affirm  in  opposition  to  the  Eleatics,  that  being  is  no  more  than 
nothing. 

4.  The  Atomistic  Necessity. — Democritus,  like  Empedocles, 
though  far  more  extensively  than  he,  attempted  to  answer  the 
question — whence  arise  these  changes  and  movements  which  we 
behold  ?  Wherein  lies  the  ground  that  the  atoms  should  enter 
into  these  manifold  combinations,  and  bring  forth  such  a  wealth 
of  inorganic  and  organic  forms  ?  Democritus  attempted  to  solve 
the  problem  by  affirming  that  the  ground  of  movement  lay  in  the 
gravity  or  original  condition  of  the  material  particles,  and,  there- 
fore, in  the  matter  itself,  but  in  this  way  he  only  talked  about  the 


THE  ATOMISTIC  PHILOSOPHY. 


39 


question  without  answering  it.  The  idea  of  an  infinite  series  of 
causalities  was  thus  attained,  but  not  a  final  ground  of  all  the 
manifestations  of  the  becoming,  and  of  change.  Such  a  final 
ground  was  still  to  be  sought,  and  as  Democritus  expressly  de- 
clared that  it  could  not  lie  in  an  ultimate  reason  (voOs),  where 
Anaxagoras  placed  it,  there  only  remained  for  him  to  find  it  in  an 
absolute  necessity,  or  a  necessary  pre-determinateness  (avdyK-rj). 
This  he  adopted  as  his  '*  final  ground,"  and  is  said  to  have  named 
it  chance  (tvxii)j  opposition  to  the  inquiry  after  final  causes,  or 
the  Anaxagorean  teleology.  Consequent  upon  this,  we  find  as  the 
prominent  characteristic  of  the  later  Atomistic  school  (Diagoras 
the  Melier),  polemics  against  the  gods  of  the  people,  and  a  con- 
stantly more  publicly  affirmed  Atheism  and  Materialism. 

5.  Relative  Position  of  the  Atomistic  Philosophy. — He- 
gel characterizes  the  relative  position  of  the  Atomistic  Philosophy 
as  follows,  viz.  : — "  In  the  Eleatic  Philosophy  being  and  not-being 
stand  as  antitheses, — ^being  alone  is,  and  not-being  is  not ;  in  the 
Heraclitic  idea,  being  and  not-being  are  the  same, — ^both  together, 
i.  e.  the  becoming,  are  the  predicate  of  concrete  being ;  but  being 
and  not-being,  as  objectively  determined,  or  in  other  words,  as 
appearing  to  the  sensuous  intuition,  are  precisely  the  same  as  the 
antithesis  of  the  fulness  and  the  void.  Parmenides,  Heraclitus 
and  the  Atomists  all  sought  for  the  abstract  universal ;  Parme- 
nides found  it  in  being ^  Heraclitus  in  the  jjrocess  of  being  per  se, 
and  the  Atomists  in  the  determiyiation  of  being  per  s^."  So 
much  of  this  as  ascribes  to  the  Atomists  the  characteristic  predi- 
cate of  being  per  se  is  doubtless  correct, — ^but  the  real  thought 
of  the  Atomistic  system  is  rather  analogous  with  the  Empedoc- 
lean,  to  explain  the  possibility  of  the  becoming,  by  presupposing 
these  substances  as  possessing  being  per  se,  but  without  quality. 
To  this  end  the  not-being  or  the  void,  i.  e.  the  side  which  is  op- 
posed to  the  Eleatic  principle,  is  elaborated  with  no  less  care  than 
the  side  which  harmonizes  with  it,  i.  e.  that  the  atoms  are  without 
quality  and  never  change  in  their  original  elements.  The  Atom- 
istic Philosophy  is  therefore  a  mediation  between  the  Eleatic  and 
tbe  Heraclitic  principles.  It  is  Eleatic  in  affirming  the  undivided 


40 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


being  per  se  of  the  atoms  ; — Heraclitic,  in  declaring  their  mul- 
teity and  manifoldness.  It  is  Eleatic  in  the  declaration  of  an 
absolute  fulness  in  the  atoms,  and  Heraclitic  in  the  claim  of  a 
real  not-being,  i.  e.  the  void  space.  It  is  Eleatic  in  its  denial  of 
the  becoming,  i.  e.  of  the  arising  and  departing, — and  Heraclitic 
in  its  affirmation  that  to  the  atoms  belong  movement  and  a  capa- 
city for  unlimited  combinations.  The  Atomists  carried  out  their 
leading  thought  more  logically  than  Empedocles,  and  we  might 
even  say  that  their  system  is  the  perfection  of  a  purely  mechanical 
explanation  of  nature,  since  all  subsequent  Atomists,  even  to  our 
own  day,  have  only  repeated  their  fundamental  conceptions.  But 
the  great  defect  which  cleaves  to  every  Atomistic  system,  Aris- 
totle has  justly  recognized,  when  he  shows  that  it  is  a  contradic- 
tion, on  the  one  hand,  to  set  up  something  corporeal  or  space-filling 
as  indivisible,  and  on  the  other,  to  derive  the  extended  from  that 
which  has  no  extension,  and  that  the  consciousless  and  inconceiv- 
able necessity  of  Democritus  is  especially  defective,  in  that  it 
totally  banishes  from  nature  all  conception  of  design.  This  is 
the  point  to  which  Anaxagoras  turns  his  attention,  and  introduces 
his  principle  of  an  intelligence  working  with  design. 


SECTION  X. 

ANAXAGORAS. 

1.  His  Personal  History. — Anaxagoras  is  said  to  have  been 
born  at  Clazamena,  about  the  year  500  B.  C. ;  to  have  gone  to 
Athens  immediately,  or  soon  after  the  Persian  war,  to  have  lived 
and  taught  there  for  a  long  time,  and,  finally,  accused  of  irreve- 
rence to  the  gods,  to  have  fled,  and  died  at  Lampsacus,  at  the  age 
of  72.  He  it  was  who  first  planted  philosophy  at  Athens,  which 
from  this  time  on  became  the  centre  of  intellectual  life  in  Greece. 
Through  his  personal  relations  to  Pericles,  Euripides,  and  other 
important  men, — among  whom   Themistocles  and  Thucydides 


ANAXAGORAS. 


41 


should  be  named — he  exerted  a  decisive  influence  upon  the  cul- 
ture of  the  age.  It  was  on  account  of  this  that  the  charge  of 
defaming  the  gods  was  brought  against  him,  doubtless  by  the 
political  opponents  of  Pericles.  Anaxagoras  wrote  a  work  "  Con- 
cerning Nature,''^  which  in  the  time  of  Socrates  was  widely  circu- 
lated. 

2.  His  Relation  to  his  Predecessors. — The  system  of  An- 
axagoras starts  from  the  same  point  with  his  predecessors,  and  is 
simply  another  attempt  at  the  solution  of  the  same  problem. 
Like  Empedocles  and  the  Atomists  so  did  Anaxagoras  most  vehe- 
mently deny  the  becoming.  "  The  becoming  and  departing," — so 
runs  one  of  his  sayings — "  the  Greeks  hold  without  foundation, 
for  nothing  can  ever  be  said  to  become  or  depart ;  but,  since  ex- 
isting things  may  be  compounded  together  and  again  divided,  we 
should  name  the  becoming  more  correctly  a  combination,  and  the 
departing  a  separation.  From  this  view,  that  every  thing  arose  by 
the  mingling  of  different  elements,  and  departed  by  the  withdraw- 
ing of  these  elements,  Anaxagoras,  like  his  predecessors,  was 
obliged  to  separate  matter  from  the  moving  power.  But  though 
his  point  of  starting  was  the  same,  yet  was  his  direction  essen- 
tially different  from  that  of  any  previous  philosopher.  It  was 
clear  that  neither  Empedocles  nor  Democritus  had  satisfactorily 
apprehended  the  moving  power.  The  mythical  energies  of  love 
and  hate  of  the  one,  or  the  unconscious  necessity  of  the  other, 
explained  nothing,  and  least  of  all,  the  design  of  the  becoming 
in  nature.  The  conception  of  an  activity  which  could  thus  work 
designedly,  must,  therefore,  be  brought  into  the  conception  of 
the  moving  power,  and  this  Anaxagoras  accomplished  by  setting 
up  the  idea  of  a  world-forming  intelligence  (i/o9?),  absolutely  sepa^ 
rated  from  all  matter  and  working  with  design. 

3.  The  Principle  of  the  voS?. — Anaxagoras  described  this 
intelligence  as  free  to  dispose,  unmingled  with  any  thing,  the 
ground  of  movement,  but  itself  unmoved,  every  where  active,  and 
the  most  refined  and  pure  of  all  things.  Although  these  predi- 
cates rest  partly  upon  a  physical  analogy,  and  do  not  exhibit 
purely  the  conception  of  immateriality,  yet  on  the  other  hand 


42 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


does  the  attribute  of  thought  and  of  a  conscious  acting  with  de- 
sign admit  no  doubt  to  remain  of  the  decided  idealistic  character 
of  the  Anaxagorean  principle.  Nevertheless,  Anaxagoras  went 
no  farther  than  to  enunciate  his  fundamental  thought  without 
attempting  its  complete  application.  The  explanation  of  this  is 
obvious  from  the  reasons  which  first  led  him  to  adopt  his  princi- 
ple. It  was  only  the  need  of  an  original  cause  of  motion,  to 
which  also  might  be  attributed  the  capacity  to  work  designedly, 
which  had  led  him  to  the  idea  of  an  immaterial  principle.  His 
vovs,  therefore,  is  almost  nothing  but  a  mover  of  matter,  and  in 
this  function  nearly  all  its  activity  is  expended.  Hence  the  uni- 
versal complaint  of  the  ancients,  especially  of  Plato  and  Aris- 
totle, respecting  the  mechanical  character  of  his  doctrine.  In 
Plato's  Phsedon  Socrates  relates  that,  in  the  hope  of  being 
directed  beyond  a  simple  occasioning,  or  mediate  cause,  he  had 
turned  to  the  book  of  Anaxagoras,  but  had  found  there  only  a 
mechanical  instead  of  a  truly  teleological  explanation  of  being. 
And  as  Plato  so  also  does  Aristotle  find  fault  with  Anaxagoras  in 
that,  while  he  admits  mind  as  the  ultimate  ground  of  things,  he 
yet  resorts  to  it  only  as  to  a  Deus  ex  machina  for  the  explanation 
of  phenomena,  whose  necessity  he  could  not  derive  from  the 
causality  in  nature.  Anaxagoras,  therefore,  has  rather  postulated 
than  proved  mind  as  an  energy  above  nature,  and  as  the  truth  and 
actuality  of  natural  being. 

The  further  extension  of  his  system,  his  doctrine  concerning 
the  homoiomeria  (constituent  elements  of  things),  which  according 
to  him  existed  together  originally  in  a  chaotic  condition  until  with 
their  separation  and  parting  the  formation  of  the  world  began — 
can  here  only  be  mentioned. 

4.  Anaxagoras  as  the  close  of  the  pre-Socratic  Real- 
isiii. — With  the  Anaxagorean  principle  of  the  vot)?,  i.  e.  with  the 
acquisition  of  an  absolutely  immaterial  principle,  closes  the  real- 
istic period  of  the  old  Grecian  Philosophy.  Anaxagoras  com- 
bined together  the  principles  of  all  his  predecessors.  The  infinite 
matter  of  the  Hylics  is  represented  in  his  chaotic  original  ming- 
ling of  things ;  the  Eleatic  pure  being  appears  in  the  idea  of  the 


THE  SOPHISTIC  PHILOSOPHY. 


43 


vovs;  the  Heraclitic  power  of  becoming  and  the  Empedoclean 
moving  energies  are  both  seen  in  the  creating  and  arranging  power 
of  the  eternal  mind,  while  the  Democritic  atoms  come  to  view  in 
the  homoiomeria.  Anaxagoras  is  the  closing  point  of  an  old  and 
the  beginning  point  of  a  new  course  of  development, — the  latter 
through  the  setting  up  of  his  ideal  principle,  and  the  former 
through  the  defective  and  completely  physical  manner  in  which 
this  principle  was  yet  again  applied. 


SECTION  XI. 

THE  SOPHISTIC  PHILOSOPHY. 

1.  Relation  of  the  Sophistic  Philosophy  to  the  Anaxa- 
GOREAN  Principle. — Anaxagoras  had  formed  the  conception  of 
mind,  and  in  this  had  recognized  thought  as  a  power  above  the 
objective  world.  Upon  this  newly  conquered  field  the  Sophistic 
philosophy  now  began  its  gambols,  and  with  childish  wantonness 
delighted  itself  in  setting  at  work  this  power,  and  in  destroying,  by 
means  of  a  subjective  dialectic,  all  objective  determinations.  The 
Sophistic  philosophy — ^though  of  far  more  significance  from  its 
relation  to  the  culture  of  the  age  than  from  its  philosophy — had 
for  its  starting  principle  the  breach  which  Anaxagoras  had  com- 
menced between  the  subjective  and  the  objective, — the  Ego  and 
the  external  world.  The  subject,  after  recognizing  himself  as 
something  higher  than  the  objective  world,  and  especially  as  some- 
thing above  the  laws  of  the  state,  above  custom  and  religious 
tradition  and  the  popular  faith,  in  the  next  place  attempted  to 
prescribe  laws  for  this  objective  world,  and  instead  of  beholding 
in  it  the  historical  manifestation  of  reason,  he  looked  upon  it  only 
as  an  exanimated  matter,  upon  which  he  might  exercise  his  will. 

The  Sophistic  philosophy  should  be  characterized  as  the  clear- 
ing up  reflection.  It  is,  therefore,  no  philosophical  system,  for  its 
doctrines  and  afi&rmations  exhibit  often  so  popular  and  even  trivial 


44 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


a  character  that  for  their  own  sake  they  would  merit  no  place  at 
all  in  the  history  of  philosophy.  It  is  also  no  philosophical  school 
in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  term, — for  Plato  cites  a  vast  number 
of  persons  under  the  common  name  of  "  Sophists," — but  it  is  an 
intellectual  and  widely  spread  direction  of  the  age,  which  had  struck 
its  roots  into  the  whole  moral,  political,  and  religious  character 
of  the  Athenian  life  of  that  time,  and  which  may  be  called  the 
Athenian  clearing  up  period. 

2.  Relation  of  the  Sophistic  Philosophy  to  the  Univer- 
sal Life  of  that  Age. — The  Sophistic  philosophy  is,  theoreti- 
cally, what  the  whole  Athenian  life  during  the  Peloponnesian  war 
was  practically.  Plato  justly  remarks  in  his  Eepublic  that  the 
doctrines  of  the  Sophists  only  expressed  the  very  principles  which 
guided  the  course  of  the  great  mass  of  men  of  that  time  in  their 
civil  and  social  relations,  and  the  hatred  with  which  they  were 
pursued  by  the  practical  statesmen,  clearly  indicates  the  jealousy 
with  which  the  latter  saw  in  them  their  rivals  and  the  destroyers 
of  their  polity.  If  the  absoluteness  of  the  empirical  subject — i.  e. 
the  view  that  the  individual  Ego  can  arbitrarily  determine  what 
is  true,  right  and  good, — is  in  fact  the  theoretical  principle  of  the 
Sophistic  philosophy,  so  does  this  in  a  practical  direction,  as  an 
unlimited  Egoism  meet  us  in  all  the  spheres  of  the  public  and 
private  life  of  that  age.  The  public  life  had  become  an  arena  of 
passion  and  selfishness ;  those  party  struggles  which  racked  Athens 
during  the  Peloponnesian  war  had  blunted  and  stifled  the  moral 
feeling ;  every  individual  accustomed  himself  to  set  up  his  own 
private  interest  above  that  of  the  state  and  the  common  weal,  and 
to  seek  in  his  own  arbitrariness  and  advantage  the  measuring  rod 
for  all  his  actions.  The  Protagorean  sentence  that  "  the  man  is 
the  measure  of  all  things "  became  practically  carried  out  only 
too  faithfully,  and  the  influence  of  the  orator  in  the  assemblies  of 
the  people  and  the  courts,  the  corruptibility  of  the  great  masses 
and  their  leaders,  and  the  weak  points  which  showed  to  the  adroit 
student  of  human  nature  the  covetousness,  vanity,  and  factious- 
ness of  others  around  him,  ofl'ered  only  too  many  opportunities  to 
bring  this  rule  into  practice.    Custom  had  lost  its  weight ;  the 


THE  SOPHISTIC  PHILOSOPHY. 


45 


laws  were  regarded  as  only  an  agreement  of  the  majority,  the 
civil  ordinance  as  an  arbitrary  restriction,  the  moral  feeling  as  the 
effect  of  the  policy  of  the  state  in  education,  the  faith  in  the  gods 
as  a  human  invention  to  intimidate  the  free  power  of  action, 
while  piety  was  looked  upon  as  a  statute  which  some  men  have 
enacted  and  which  every  one  else  is  justified  in  using  all  his  elo- 
quence to  change.  This  degradation  of  a  necessity,  which  is  con- 
formable to  nature  and  reason,  and  which  is  of  universal  validity, 
— to  an  accidental  human  ordinance,  is  chiefly  the  point  in  which 
the  Sophistic  philosophy  came  in  contact  with  the  universal  con- 
sciousness of  the  educated  class  of  that  period,  and  we  cannot 
with  certainty  determine  what  share  science  and  what  share  the 
life  may  have  had  in  this  connection, — whether  the  Sophistic 
philosophy  found  only  the  theoretical  formula  for  the  practical 
life  and  tendencies  of  the  age,  or  whether  the  moral  corruption 
was  rather  a  consequence  of  that  destructive  influence  which  the 
principles  of  the  Sophists  exerted  upon  the  whole  course  of 
cotemporaneous  thought. 

It  would  be,  however,  to  mistake  the  spirit  of  history  if  we 
were  only  to  bewail  the  epoch  of  the  Sophists  instead  of  admitting 
for  it  a  relative  justification.  These  phenomena  were  in  part  the 
necessary  product  of  the  collective  development  of  the  age.  The 
faith  in  the  popular  religion  fell  so  suddenly  to  the  ground  simply 
because  it  possessed  in  itself  no  inner,  moral  support.  The 
grossest  vices  and  acts  of  baseness  could  all  be  justified  and  ex 
cused  from  the  examples  of  mythology.  Even  Plato  himself, 
though  otherwise  an  advocate  of  a  devout  faith  in  the  traditional 
religion,  accuses  the  poets  of  his  nation  with  leading  the  very 
moral  feeling  astray,  through  the  unworthy  representations  which 
they  had  spread  abroad  concerning  the  gods  and  the  hero  world. 
It  was  moreover  unavoidable  that  the  advancing  science  should 
clash  with  tradition.  The  physical  philosophers  had  already  long 
lived  in  open  hostility  to  the  popular  religion,  and  the  more  con- 
vincingly they  demonstrated  by  analogies  and  laws  that  many 
things  which  had  hitherto  been  regarded  as  the  immediate  efi'ect 
of  Divine  omnipotence,  were  only  the  results  of  natural  causes 


46 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


SO  much  the  more  easily  would  it  happen  that  the  educated  classes 
would  become  perplexed  in  reference  to  all  their  previous  convic- 
tions. It  was  no  wonder  then  that  the  transformed  consciousness 
of  the  time  should  penetrate  all  the  provinces  of  art  and  poesy ; 
that  in  sculpture,  wholly  analogous  to  the  rhetoric  art  of  the 
Sophistic  philosophy,  the  emotive  should  occupy  the  place  of  the 
elevated  style ;  that  Euripides,  the  sophist  among  tragedians, 
should  bring  the  whole  philosophy  of  the  time  and  its  manner  of 
moral  reflection  upon  the  stage ;  and  that,  instead  of  like  the 
earlier  poets,  bringing  forward  his  actors  to  represent  an  idea,  he 
should  use  them  only  as  means  to  excite  a  momentary  emotion  or 
some  other  stage  effect. 

8.  Tendencies  of  the  Sophistic  Philosophy. — To  give  a 
definite  classification  of  the  Sophistic  philosophy,  which  should 
be  derived  from  the  conception  of  the  general  phenomena  of  the 
age,  is  exceedingly  difficult,  since,  like  the  French  "clearing  up" 
of  the  last  century,  it  entered  into  every  department  of  knowledge. 
The  Sophists  directed  the  universal  culture  of  the  time.  Prota- 
goras was  known  as  a  teacher  of  virtue,  Grorgias  as  a  rhetorician 
and  politician,  Prodicus  as  a  grammarian  and  teacher  of  syn- 
onyms, Hippias  as  a  man  of  various  attainments,  who  besides 
astronomical  and  mathematical  studies  busied  himself  with  a 
theory  of  mnemonics ;  others  took  for  their  problem  the  art  of 
education,  and  others  still  the  explanation  of  the  old  poets ;  the 
brothers  Euthydemus  and  Dionysidorus  gave  instruction  in  the 
bearing  of  arms  and  military  tactics;  many  among  them,  as 
Gorgias,  Prodicus,  and  Hippias,  were  intrusted  with  embassies : 
in  short  the  Sophists,  each  one  according  to  his  individual  ten- 
dency, took  upon  themselves  every  variety  of  calling  and  entered 
into  every  sphere  of  science ;  their  method  is  the  only  thing  com- 
mon to  all.   Moreover  the  relation  of  the  Sophists  to  the  educated 
public,  their  striving  after  popularity,  fame  and  money,  disclose 
the  fact  that  their  studies  and  occupations  were  for  the  most  part 
controlled,  not  by  a  subjective  scientific  interest,  but  by  some  ex- 
ternal motive.    With  that  roving  spirit  which  was  an  essential 
peculiarity  of  the  later  Sophists,  travelling  from  city  to  city,  and 


I 

I 

THE  SOPHISTIC  PHILOSOPHY.  47 

announcing  themselves  as  thinkers  by  profession — and  giving  their 
instructions  with  prominent  reference  to  a  good  recompense  and 
the  favor  of  the  rich  private  classes,  it  was  very  natural  that  they 
should  discourse  upon  the  prominent  questions  of  universal  inter- 
est and  of  public  culture,  with  occasional  reference  also  to  the 
favorite  occupation  of  this  or  that  rich  man  with  whom  they 
might  be  brought  in  contact.  Hence  their  peculiar  strength  lay 
far  more  in  a  formal  dexterity,  in  an  acuteness  of  thought  and  a 
capacity  of  bringing  it  readily  into  exercise,  in  the  art  of  discourse 
than  in  any  positive  knowledge ;  their  instruction  in  virtue  was 
given  either  in  positive  dogmatism  or  in  empty  bombast,  and  even 
where  the  Sophistic  philosophy  became  really  polymathic,  the  art 
of  speech  still  remained  as  the  great  thing.  So  we  find  in  Xeno- 
phon,  Hippias  boasting  that  he  can  speak  repeatedly  upon  every 
subject  and  say  something  new  each  time,  while  we  hear  it  ex- 
pressly affirmed  of  others,  that  they  had  no  need  of  positive 
knowledge  in  order  to  discourse  satisfactorily  upon  every  thing, 
and  to  answer  every  question  extemporaneously ;  and  when  many 
Sophists  make  it  a  great  point  to  hold  a  well-arranged  discourse 
about  something  of  the  least  possible  significance  {e.  g.  salt),  so 
do  we  see  that  with  them  the  thing  was  only  a  means  while  the 
word  was  the  end,  and  we  ought  not  to  be  surprised  that  in  this 
respect  the  Sophistic  philosophy  sunk  to  that  empty  technicality 
which  Plato  in  his  Phaedrus,  on  account  of  its  want  of  character, 
subjects  to  so  rigid  a  criticism. 

4.  The  Significance  of  the  Sophistic  Philosophy  from  its 
RELATION  to  THE  CuLTURE  OF  THE  Age. — The  Scientific  and  moral 
defect  of  the  Sophistic  philosophy  is  at  first  view  obvious ;  and. 
since  certain  modern  writers  of  history  with  over-officious  zeal 
have  painted  its  dark  sides  in  black,  and  raised  an  earnest  accu- 
sation against  its  frivolity,  immorality,  and  greediness  for  pleasure, 
its  conceitedness  and  selfishness,  and  bare  appearance  of  wisdom 
and  art  of  dispute — it  needs  here  no  farther  elucidation.  But  the 
point  in  it  most  apt  to  be  overlooked  is  the  merit  of  the  Sophists 
in  their  effect  upon  the  culture  of  the  age.  To  say,  as  is  done, 
that  they  had  only  the  negative  merit  of  calling  out  the  opposi- 


48 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


tion  of  Socrates  and  Plato,  is  to  leave  the  immense  influence  and 
tlie  high  fame  of  so  many  among  them,  as  well  as  the  revolution 
which  they  brought  about  in  the  thinking  of  a  whole  nation,  an 
inexplicable  phenomenon.  It  were  inexplicable  that  e.  g.  Socrates 
should -attend  the  lectures  of  Prodicus,  and  direct  to  him  other 
students,  if  he  did  not  acknowledge  the  worth  of  his  grammatical 
performances  or  recognize  his  merit  for  the  soundness  of  his  logic. 
Moreover,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  Protagoras  has  hit  upon  many 
correct  principles  of  rhetoric,  and  has  satisfactorily  established 
certain  grammatical  categories.  Generally  may  it  be  said  of  the 
Sophists,  that  they  threw  among  the  people  a  fulness  in  every 
department  of  knowledge ;  that  they  strewed  about  them  a  vast 
number  of  fruitful  germs  of  development ;  that  they  called  out 
investigations  in  the  theory  of  knowledge,  in  logic  and  in  lan- 
guage ;  that  they  laid  the  basis  for  the  methodical  treatment  of 
many  branches  of  human  knowledge,  and  that  they  partly  founded 
and  partly  called  forth  that  wonderful  intellectual  activity  which 
characterized  Athens  at  that  time.  Their  greatest  merit  is  their 
service  in  the  department  of  language.  They  may  even  be  said 
to  have  created  and  formed  the  Attic  prose.  They  are  the  first 
who  made  style  as  such  a  separate  object  of  attention  and  study, 
and  who  set  about  rigid  investigations  respecting  number  and  the 
art  of  rhetorical  representation.  With  them  Athenian  eloquence, 
which  they  first  incited,  begins.  Antiphon  as  well  as  Isocrates — 
the  latter  the  founder  of  the  most  flourishing  school  of  Greek 
rhetoric — are  offshoots  of  the  Sophistic  philosophy.  In  all  this 
there  is  ground  enough  to  regard  this  whole  phenomenon  as  not 
barely  a  symptom  of  decay. 

5.  Individual  Sophists. — The  first,  who  is  said  to  have  been 
called,  in  the  received  sense,  Sophist,  is  Protagoras  of  Abdera, 
who  flourished  about  440  b.  c.  He  taught,  and  for  wages,  in 
Sicily  and  in  Athens,  but  was  driven  out  of  the  latter  place  as  a 
reviler  of  the  gods,  and  his  book  concerning  the  gods  was  burnt 
by  the  herald  in  the  public  market-place.  It  began  with  these 
words :  "I  can  know  nothing  concerning  the  gods,  whether  they 
exist  or  not ;  for  we  are  prevented  from  gaining  such  knowledge 


THE  SOPHISTIC  PHILOSOPHY. 


49 


not  only  by  the  obscurity  of  the  thing  itself,  but  by  the  shortness 
of  the  human  life."  In  another  writing  he  develops  his  doctrine 
concerning  knowing  or  not-knowing.  Starting  from  the  Heraclitic 
position  that  every  thing  is  in  a  constant  flow,  and  applying  this 
preeminently  to  the  thinking  subject,  he  taught  that  the  man  is 
the  measure  of  all  things,  who  determines  in  respect  of  being  that 
it  may  be,  and  of  not-being  that  it  may  not  be,  i.  e.  that  is  true 
for  the  perceiving  subject  which  he,  in  the  constant  movement  of 
things  and  of  himself,  at  every  moment  perceives  and  is  sensible 
of — and  hence  he  has  theoretically  no  other  relation  to  the  ex- 
ternal world  than  the  sensuous  apprehension,  and  practically  no 
other  than  the  sensuous  desire.  But  now,  since  perception  and 
sensation  are  as  diverse  as  the  subjects  themselves,  and  are  in  the 
highest  degree  variable  in  the  very  same  subject,  there  follows  the 
farther  result  that  nothing  has  an  objective  validity  and  deter- 
mination, that  contradictory  affirmations  in  reference  to  the  same 
object  must  be  received  as  alike  true,  and  that  error  and  contra- 
diction cannot  be.  Protagoras  does  not  seem  to  have  made  any 
efforts  to  give  these  frivolous  propositions  a  practical  and  logical 
application.  According  to  the  testimony  of  the  ancients,  a  per- 
sonal character  worthy  of  esteem,  cannot  be  denied  him ;  and  even 
Plato,  in  the  dialogue  which  bears  his  name,  goes  no  farther  than 
to  object  to  his  complete  obscurity  respecting  the  nature  of 
morality,  while,  in  his  Gorgias  and  Philebus,  he  charges  the  later 
Sophists  with  affirming  the  principles  of  immorality  and  moral 
baseness. 

Next  to  Protagoras,  the  most  famous  Sophist  was  Gorgias. 
During  the  Peloponnesian  war  (426  b.  c),  he  came  from  Leontium 
to  Athens  in  order  to  gain  assistance  for  his  native  city  against  the 
encroachments  of  Syracuse.  After  the  successful  accomplishment 
of  his  errand  he  still  abode  for  some  time  in  Athens,  but  resided 
the  latter  part  of  his  life  in  Thessaly,  where  he  died  about  the 
same  time  with  Socrates.  The  pompous  ostentation  of  his  ex- 
ternal appearance  is  often  ridiculed  by  Plato,  and  the  discourses 
through  which  he  was  wont  to  exhibit  himself  display  the  same 
character,  attempting,  through  poetical  ornament,  and  florid 
3 


50 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


metaphors,  and  uncommon  words,  and  a  mass  of  hitherto  unheard 
of  figures  of  speech,  to  dazzle  and  delude  the  mind.  As  a  phi- 
losopher he  adhered  to  the  Eleatics,  especially  to  Zeno,  and 
attempts  to  prove  upon  the  basis  of  their  dialectic  schematism, 
that  universally  nothing  is,  or  if  there  could  be  a  being,  it  would 
not  be  cognizable,  or  if  cognizable  it  would  not  be  communicable. 
Hence  his  writing  bore  characteristically  enough  the  title — "  Con- 
cerning Not-heing  or  Nature?''  The  proof  of  the  first  proposition 
that  universally  nothing  is,  since  it  can  be  established  neither  as 
being  nor  as  not-being,  nor  yet  as  at  the  same  time  both  being 
and  not-being,  rests  entirely  upon  the  position  that  all  existence 
is  a  space-filling  existence  (has  place  and  body),  and  is  in  fact 
the  final  consequence  which  overturns  itself,  in  other  words  the 
self-destruction  of  the  hitherto  physical  method  of  philosophizing. 

The  later  Sophists  with  reckless  daring  carried  their  conclu- 
sions far  beyond  Gorgias  and  Protagoras.  They  were  for  the 
most  part  free  thinkers,  who  pulled  to  the  ground  the  religion, 
laws,  and  customs  of  their  birth.  Among  these  should  be  named, 
prominently,  the  tyrant  Critias,  Polus,  Callicles,  and  Thrasy- 
machus.  The  two  latter  openly  taught  the  right  of  the  stronger 
as  the  law  of  nature,  the  unbridled  satisfaction  of  desire  as  the 
natural  right  of  the  stronger,  and  the  setting  up  of  restraining 
laws  as  a  crafty  invention  of  the  weaker ;  and  Critias,  the  most 
talented  but  the  most  abandoned  of  the  thirty  tyrants,  wrote  a 
poem,  in  which  he  represented  the  faith  in  the  gods  as  an  invention 
of  crafty  statesmen.  Hippias  of  Elis,  a  man  of  great  knowledge, 
bore  an  honorable  character,  although  he  did  not  fall  behind  the 
rest  in  bombast  and  boasting;  but  before  all,  was  Prodicus,  in 
reference  to  whom  it  became  a  proverb  to  say — "  as  wise  as  Pro- 
dicus," and  concerning  whom  Plato  himself  and  even  Aristophanes 
never  spoke  without  veneration.  Especially  famous  among  the 
ancients  were  his  parenetical  (persuasive)  lectures  concerning  the 
choice  of  a  mode  of  life  (Xenophon's  Memorabilia,  II.  1),  con- 
cerning external  good  and  its  use,  concerning  life  and  death,  &c., 
discourses  in  which  he  manifests  a  refined  moral  feeling,  and  hia 
observation  of  life ;  although  through  the  want  of  a  higher  ethical 


THE  SOPHISTIC  PHILOSOPHY. 


51 


and  scientific  principle,  lie  must  be  placed  behind  Socrates,  whose 
forerunner  he  has  been  called.  The  later  generations  of  Sophists, 
as  they  are  shown  in  the  Euthydemus  of  Plato,  sink  to  a  common 
level  of  bufibonery  and  disgraceful  strife  for  gain,  and  comprise 
their  whole  dialectic  art  in  certain  formulas  for  entangling 
fallacies. 

6.  Transition  to  Socrates  and  Characteristic  of  the  fol- 
lowing Period. — That  which  is  true  in  the  Sophistic  philosophy 
is  the  truth  of  the  subjectivity,  of  the  self-consciousness,  i.  e.  the 
demand  that  every  thing  which  I  am  to  admit  must  be  shown  as 
rational  before  my  own  consciousness — that  which  is  false  in  it  is 
its  apprehension  of  this  subjectivity  as  nothing  farther  than  finite, 
empirical  egoistic  subjectivity,  i.  e.  the  demand  that  my  accidental 
will  and  opinion  should  determine  what  is  rational ;  its  truth  is 
that  it  set  up  the  principle  of  freedom,  of  self-certainty ;  its  un- 
truth is  that  it  established  the  accidental  will  and  notion  of  the 
individual  upon  the  throne.  To  carry  out  now  the  principle  of 
freedom  and  self-consciousness  to  its  truth,  to  gain  a  true  world 
of  objective  thought  with  a  real  and  distinct  content,  by  the  same 
means  of  reflection  which  the  Sophists  had  only  used  to  destroy  it, 
to  establish  the  objective  will,  the  rational  thinking,  the  absolute  or 
ideal  in  the  place  of  the  empirical  subjectivity  was  the  problem  of 
the  next  advent  in  philosophy,  the  problem  which  Socrates  took 
up  and  solved.  To  make  the  absolute  or  ideal  subjectivity  instead 
of  the  empirical  for  a  principle,  is  to  affirm  that  the  true  measure 
of  all  things  is  not  my  {%.  e.  the  individual  person's)  opinion, 
fancy  and  will ;  that  what  is  true,  right  and  good,  does  not  de- 
pend upon  my  caprice  and  arbitrary  determination,  or  upon  that 
of  any  other  empirical  subject ;  but  while  it  is  my  thinking,  it  is 
my  thinking,  the  rational  within  me,  which  has  to  decide  upon  all 
these  points.  But  my  thinking,  my  reason,  is  not  something 
specially  belonging  to  me,  but  something  common  to  every  rational 
being;  something  universal,  and  in  so  far  as  I  am  a  rational  and 
thinking  being,  is  my  subjectivity  a  universal  one.  But  every  think- 
ing individual  has  the  consciousness  that  what  he  holds  as  right, 
as  duty,  as  good  or  evil,  does  not  appear  as  such  to  him  alone  but 


52 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


to  every  rational  being,  and  that  consequently  his  thinking  has 
"the  character  of  universality,  of  universal  validity,  in  a  word — of 
objectivity.  This  then  in  opposition  to  the  Sophistic  philosophy 
is  the  stand-point  of  Socrates,  and  therefore  with  him  the  phi- 
losophy of  ohjective  thought  begins.  What  Socrates  could  do  in 
opposition  to  the  Sophists  was  to  show  that  reflection  led  to  the 
same  results  as  faith  or  obedience,  hitherto  without  reflection, 
had  done,  and  that  the  thinking  man  guided  by  his  free  conscious- 
ness and  his  own  conviction,  would  learn  to  form  the  same  judg- 
ments and  take  the  same  course  to  which  life  and  custom  had 
already  and  unconsciously  induced  the  ordinary  man.  The  posi- 
tion, that  while  the  man  is  the  measure  of  all  things,  it  is  the 
man  as  universal,  as  thinking,  as  rational,  is  the  fundamental 
thought  of  the  Socratic  philosophy,  which  is,  by  virtue  of  this 
thought,  the  positive  complement  of  the  Sophistic  principle. 

With  Socrates  begins  the  second  period  of  the  Grecian  philoso- 
phy. This  period  contains  three  philosophical  systems,  whose 
authors,  standing  to  each  other  in  the  personal  relation  of  teacher 
and  pupil,  represent  three  successive  generations, — Socrates, 
Plato,  Aristotle. 

 •♦> 

SECTION  XII. 

SOCRATES.'''" 

1.  His  Personal  Character. — The  new  philosophical  princi- 
ple appears  in  the  personal  character  of  Socrates.  His  philosophy 
is  his  mode  of  acting  as  an  individual ;  his  life  and  doctrine  can- 
not be  separated.  His  biography,  therefore,  forms  the  only  com- 
plete representation  of  his  philosophy,  and  what  the  narrative  of 
Xenophon  presents  us  as  the  definite  doctrine  of  Socrates,  is  con- 
sequently nothing  but  an  abstract  of  his  inward  character,  as 

*  The  article  on  Socrates,  from  page  52  to  page  64,  "was  translated  by 
Prof.  N.  G.  Clark,  of  the  University  of  Vermont. 


SOCRATES. 


53 


it  found  expression  from  time  to  time  in  his  conversation.  Plato 
yet  more  regarded  his  master  as  such  an  archetypal  personality, 
and  a  luminous  exhibition  of  the  historical  Socrates  is  the  special 
object  of  his  later  and  maturer  dialogues,  and  of  these  again,  the 
Symposium  is  the  most  brilliant  apotheosis  of  the  Eros  incarnated 
in  the  person  of  Socrates,  of  the  philosophical  impulse  transformed 
into  character. 

Socrates  was  born  in  the  year  469  B.  C,  the  son  of  Sophro- 
niscus,  a  sculptor,  and  Phgenarete,  a  midwife.  In  his  youth  he  was 
trained  by  his  father  to  follow  his  own  profession,  and  in  this  he 
is  said  not  to  have  been  without  skill.  Three  draped  figures  of 
the  Graces,  called  the  work  of  Socrates,  were  seen  by  Pausanias, 
upon  the  Akropolis.  Little  farther  is  known  of  his  education. 
He  may  have  profited  by  the  instruction  of  Prodicus  and  the 
musician,  Damon,  but  he  stood  in  no  personal  connection  with  the 
proper  philosophers,  who  flourished  before,  or  cotemporaneously 
with  him.  He  became  what  he  was  by  himself  alone,  and  just 
for  this  reason  does  he  form  an  era  in  the  old  philosophy.  If  the 
ancients  call  him  a  scholar  of  Anaxagoras,  or  of  the  natural  phi- 
losopher, Archelaus,  the  first  is  demonstrably  false,  and  the  second, 
to  say  the  least,  is  altogether  improbable.  He  never  sought  other 
means  of  culture  than  those  afforded  in  his  native  city.  "With 
the  exception  of  one  journey  to  a  public  festival,  the  military 
campaigns  which  led  him  as  far  as  Potidasa,  Delion,  and  Amphi- 
polis,  he  never  left  Athens. 

The  period  when  Socrates  first  began  to  devote  himself  to 
the  education  of  youth,  can  be  determined  only  approximately 
from  the  time  of  the  first  representation  of  the  Clouds  of  Aristo- 
phanes, which  was  in  the  year  423.  The  date  of  the  Delphic 
oracle,  which  pronounced  him  the  wisest  of  men,  is  not  known. 
But  in  the  traditions  of  his  followers,  he  is  almost  uniformly 
represented  as  an  old,  or  as  a  gray-headed  man.  His  mode  of 
instruction,  wholly  different  from  the  pedantry  and  boastful  osten- 
tation of  the  Sophists,  was  altogether  unconstrained,  conversa- 
tional, popular,  starting  from  objects  lying  nearest  at  hand  and 
the  most  insignificant,  and  deriving  the  necessary  illustrations  and 


54 


A  mSTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


proofs  from  the  most  common  matters  of  every  day  life  ;  in  fact, 
he  was  reproached  by  his  cotemporaries  for  speaking  ever  only  of 
drudges,  smiths,  cobblers  and  tanners.  So  we  find  him  at  the 
market,  in  the  gymnasia,  in  the  workshops,  busy  early  and  late, 
talking  with  youth,  with  young  men,  and  with  old  men,  on  the 
proper  aim  and  business  of  life,  convincing  them  of  their  igno- 
rance, and  wakening  up  in  them  the  slumbering  desires  after 
knowledge.  In  every  human  effort,  whether  directed  to  the 
interests  of  the  commonwealth,  or  to  the  private  individual  and  the 
gains  of  trade,  to  science  or  to  art,  this  master  of  helps  to 
spiritual  births  could  find  fit  points  of  contact  for  the  awakening 
of  a  true  self-knowledge,  and  a  moral  and  religious  consciousness. 
However  often  his  attempts  failed,  or  were  rejected  with  bitter 
scorn,  or  requited  with  hatred  and  unthankfulness,  yet,  led  on  by 
the  clear  conviction  that  a  real  improvement  in  the  condition  of 
the  state  could  come  only  from  a  proper  education  of  its  youth, 
he  remained  to  the  last  true  to  his  chosen  vocation.  Purely 
Greek  in  these  relations  to  the  rising  generation,  he  designated 
himself,  by  preference,  as  the  most  ardent  lover ;  Greek  too  in 
this,  that  with  him,  notwithstanding  these  free  relations  of  friend- 
ship, his  own  domestic  life  fell  quite  into  the  background.  He 
nowhere  shows  much  regard  for  his  wife  and  children ;  the  noto- 
rious, though  altogether  too  much  exaggerated  ill-nature  of  Xan- 
tippe,  leads  us  to  suspect,  however,  that  his  domestic  relations 
were  not  the  most  happy. 

As  a  man,  as  a  practical  sage,  Socrates  is  pictured  in  the 
brightest  colors  by  all  narrators.  "  He  was,"  says  Xenophon,  "so 
pious,  that  he  did  nothing  without  the  advice  of  the  gods;  so 
just,  that  he  never  injured  any  one  even  in  the  least ;  so  com- 
pletely master  of  himself,  that  he  never  chose  the  agreeable  in- 
stead of  the  good  ;  so  discerning,  that  he  never  failed  in  distin- 
guishing the  better  from  the  worse ;  "  in  short,  he  was  "  just  the 
best  and  happiest  man  possible."  (Xen.  Mem.  I.  1,  11.  lY.  8, 
11.)  Still  that  which  lends  to  his  person  such  a  peculiar  charm, 
is  the  happy  blending  and  harmonious  connection  of  all  its  char- 
acteristic traits,  the  perfection  of  a  beautiful,  plastic  nature.  In 


SOCRATES. 


56 


all  this  universality  of  his  genius,  in  this  force  of  character,  hy 
which  he  combined  the  most  contradictory  and  incongruous  ele- 
ments into  a  harmonious  whole,  in  this  lofty  elevation  above  every 
human  weakness, — in  a  word,  as  a  perfect  model,  he  is  most  strik- 
ingly depicted  in  the  brilliant  eulogy  of  Alcibiades,  in  the  Sym- 
posium of  Plato.  In  the  scantier  representation  of  Xenophon, 
also,  we  find  everywhere  a  classic  form,  a  man  possessed  of  the 
finest  social  culture,  full  of  Athenian  politeness,  infinitely  removed 
from  every  thing  like  gloomy  asceticism,  a  man  as  valiant  upon 
the  field  of  battle  as  in  the  festive  hall,  conducting  himself  with 
the  most  unconstrained  freedom,  and  yet  with  entire  sobriety  and 
self-control,  a  perfect  picture  of  the  happiest  Athenian  time, 
without  the  acerbity,  the  one-sidedness,  and  contracted  reserve  of 
the  later  moralists,  an  ideal  representation  of  the  genuinely 
human  virtues. 

2.  Socrates  and  Aristophanes. — Socrates  seems  early  to 
have  attained  universal  celebrity  through  the  peculiarities  attach- 
ing to  his  person  and  character.  Nature  had  furnished  him  with 
a  remarkable  external  physiognomy.  His  crooked,  turned-up 
nose,  his  projecting  eye,  his  bald  pate,  his  corpulent  body,  gave 
his  form  a  striking  similarity  to  the  Silenic,  a  comparison  which 
is  carried  out  in  Xenophon's  "  Feast,"  in  sprightly  jest,  and 
in  Plato's  Symposium,  with  as  much  ingenuity  as  profoundness. 
To  this  was  added  his  miserable  dress,  his  going  barefoot,  his 
posture,  his  often  standing  still,  and  rolling  his  eyes.  After  all 
this,  one  will  hardly  be  surprised  that  the  Athenian  comedy  took 
advantage  of  such  a  remarkable  character.  But  there  was  an- 
other and  peculiar  motive,  which  influenced  Aristophanes.  He 
was  a  most  ardent  admirer  of  the  good  old  times,  an  enthusiastic 
eulogist  of  the  manners  and  the  constitution,  under  which  the 
fathers  had  been  reared.  As  it  was  his  great  object  to  waken  up 
anew  in  his  people,  and  to  stimulate  a  longing  after  those  good 
old  times,  his  passionate  hatred  broke  out  against  all  modern 
efforts  in  politics,  art  and  philosophy,  of  that  increasing  mock- 
wisdom,  which  went  hand  in  hand  with  a  degenerating  democracy. 
Hence  comes  his  bitter  railing  at  Cleon,  the  Demagogue  (in  the 


56 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


Knights),  at  Euripides,  the  sentimental  play- writer  (in  the  Erogs) 
and  at  Socrates,  the  Sophist  (in  the  Clouds).  The  latter,  as  the 
representative  of  a  subtle,  destructive  philosophy,  must  have  ap- 
peared to  him  just  as  corrupt  and  pernicious,  as  the  party  of  pro- 
gress in  politics,  who  trampled  without  conscience  upon  every 
thing  which  had  come  down  from  the  past.  It  is,  therefore,  the 
fundamental  thought  of  the  Clouds  to  expose  Socrates  to  public 
contempt,  as  the  representative  of  the  Sophistic  philosophy,  a 
mere  semblance  of  wisdom,  at  once  vain,  profitless,  corrupting  in 
its  influence  upon  the  youth,  and  undermining  all  true  discipline 
and  morality.  Seen  in  this  light,  and  from  a  moral  stand-point, 
the  motives  of  Aristophanes  may  find  some  excuse,  but  they  can- 
not be  justified ;  and  his  representation  of  Socrates,  into  whose 
character  all  the  characteristic  features  of  the  Sophistic  philoso- 
phy are  interwoven,  even  the  most  contemptible  and  hateful,  yet 
so  that  the  most  unmistakable  likeness  is  still  apparent,  cannot  be 
admitted  on  the  ground  that  Socrates  did  really  have  the  greatest 
formal  resemblance  to  the  Sophists.  The  Clouds  can  only  be  de- 
signated as  a  culpable  misunderstanding,  and  as  an  act  of  gross 
injustice  brought  about  by  blinded  passion;  and  Hegel,  when  he 
attempts  to  defend  the  conduct  of  Aristophanes,  forgets,  that, 
while  the  comic  writer  may  caricature,  he  must  do  it  without 
having  recourse  to  public  calumniation.  In  fact  all  the  political 
and  social  tendencies  of  Aristophanes  rest  on  a  gross  misunder- 
standing of  historical  development.  The  good  old  times,  as  he 
fancies  them,  are  a  fiction.  It  lies  j  ust  as  little  in  the  realm  of 
possibility,  that  a  morality  without  reflection,  and  a  homely  in- 
genuousness, such  as  mark  a  nation's  childhood,  should  be  forced 
upon  a  time  in  which  reflection  has  utterly  eaten  out  all  imme- 
diateness,  and  unconscious  moral  simplicity,  as  that  a  grown  up 
man  should  become  a  child  again  in  the  natural  way.  Aristo- 
phanes himself  attests  the  impossibility  of  such  a  return,  when  in 
a  fit  of  humor,  with  cynic  raillery,  he  gives  up  all  divine  and 
human  authority  to  ridicule,  and  thereby,  however  commendable 
may  have  been  the  patriotic  motive  prompting  him  to  this  eomic 
extravagance,  demonstrates,  that  he  himself  no  longer  stands 


SOCRATES. 


57 


upon  the  basis  of  the  old  morality,  that  he  too  is  the  son  of  his 
time. 

3.  The  Condemnation  of  Socrates. — To  this  same  confound- 
ing of  his  efforts  with  those  of  the  Sophists,  and  the  same  ten- 
dency to  restore  by  violent  means  the  old  discipline  and  morality, 
Socrates,  twenty-four  years  later,  fell  a  victim.  After  he  had 
lived  and  labored  at  Athens  for  many  years  in  his  usual  manner> 
after  the  storm  of  the  Peloponnesian  war  had  passed  by,  and  this 
city  had  experienced  the  most  varied  political  fortunes,  in  his 
seventieth  year  he  was  brought  to  trial  and  accused  of  neglecting 
the  gods  of  the  state,  of  introducing  new  deities,  and  also  of 
corrupting  the  youth.  His  accusers  were  Melitus,  a  young  poet, 
Anytus,  a  demagogue,  and  Lycon,  an  orator,  men  in  every  respect 
insignificant,  and  acting,  as  it  seems,  without  motives  of  personal 
enmity.  The  trial  resulted  in  his  condemnation.  After  a  fortu- 
nate accident  had  enabled  him  to  spend  thirty  days  more  with  his 
scholars  in  his  confinement,  spurning  a  flight  from  prison,  he  drank 
the  poisoned  cup  in  the  year  399  B.  C. 

The  first  motive  to  his  accusation,  as  already  remarked,  was 
his  identification  with  the  Sophists,  the  actual  belief  that  his  doc- 
trines and  activity  were  marked  with  the  same  character  of  hos- 
tility to  the  interests  of  the  state,  as  those  of  the  Sophists,  which 
had  already  occasioned  so  much  mischief.  The  three  points  in 
the  accusation,  though  evidently  resting  on  a  misunderstanding, 
alike  indicate  this ;  they  are  precisely  those  by  which  Aristophanes 
had  sought  to  characterize  the  Sophist  in  the  person  of  Socrates. 
This  "  corruption  of  the  youth,"  this  bringing  in  of  new  customs, 
and  a  new  mode  of  culture  and  education  generally,  was  precisely 
the  charge  which  was  brought  against  the  Sophists  ;  moreover,  in 
Plato's  Menon,  Anytus,  one  of  the  three  accusers,  is  introduced 
as  the  bitter  enemy  of  the  Sophists  and  of  their  manner  of  in- 
struction. So  too  in  respect  to  the  denial  of  the  national  gods  : 
before  this,  Protagoras,  accused  of  denying  the  god.s,  had  been 
obliged  to  flee,  and  Prodicus,  to  drink  hemlock,  a  victim  to  the 
same  distrust.  Even  five  years  after  the  death  of  Socrates,  Xeno- 
phon,  who  was  not  present  at  the  trial,  felt  himself  called  upon 
3* 


58 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


to  write  his  Memorabilia  in  defence  of  liis  teacher,  so  wide-spread 
and  deep-rooted  was  the  prejudice  against  him. 

Beside  this  there  was  also  a  second,  probably  a  more  decisive 
reason.  As  the  Sophistic  philosophy  was,  in  its  very  nature, 
eminently  aristocratic,  and  Socrates,  as  a  supposed  Sophist,  con- 
sequently passed  for  an  aristocrat,  his  entire  mode  of  life  could 
not  fail  to  make  him  appear  like  a  bad  citizen  in  the  eyes  of  the 
restored  democracy.  He  had  never  concerned  himself  in  the 
affairs  of  the  state,  had  never  but  once  sustained  an  official  char- 
acter, and  then,  as  chief  of  the  Prytanes,  had  disagreed  with  the 
will  of  the  people  and  the  rulers.  (Plat.  Apol.  ^  32.  Xen.  Mem. 
I.  1,  18.)  In  his  seventieth  year,  he  mounted  the  orator's  stand 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  on  the  occasion  of  his  own  accusation. 
His  whole  manner  was  somewhat  cosmopolitan ;  he  is  even  said 
to  have  remarked,  that  he  was  not  an  Athenian,  nor  a  Greek,  but 
a  citizen  of  the  world.  We  must  also  take  into  account,  that  he 
found  fault  with  the  Athenian  democracy  upon  every  occasion, 
especially  with  the  democratic  institution  of  choice  by  lot,  that  he 
decidedly  preferred  the  Spartan  state  to  the  Athenian,  and  that 
he  excited  the  distrust  of  the  "democrats  by  his  confidential  rela- 
tions with  the  former  leaders  of  the  oligarchic  party.  (Xen.  Mem. 
I.  2,  9,  sq.)  Among  others  who  were  of  the  oligarchic  interest, 
and  friendly  to  the  Spartans,  Critias  in  particular,  one  of  the 
thirty  tyrants,  had  been  his  scholar ;  so  too  Alcibiades — two  men, 
who  had  been  the  cause  of  much  evil  to  the  Athenian  people.  If 
now  we  accept  the  uniform  tradition,  that  two  of  his  accusers  were 
men  of  fair  standing  in  the  democratic  party,  and  farther,  that 
his  judges  were  men  who  had  fled  before  the  thirty  tyrants,  and 
later  had  overthrown  the  power  of  the  oligarchy,  we  find  it  much 
more  easy  to  understand  how  they,  in  the  case  before  them,  should 
have  supposed  they  were  acting  wholly  in  the  interest  of  the 
democratic  party,  when  they  pronounced  condemnation  upon  the 
accused,  especially  as  enough  to  all  appearance  could  be  brought 
against  him.  The  hurried  trial  presents  nothing  very  remarkable, 
in  a  generation  which  had  grown  up  during  the  Peloponnesian 
war,  and  in  a  people  that  adopted  and  repented  of  their  passion- 


SOCRATES. 


59 


ato  resolves  with  the  like  haste.  Yea,  more,  if  we  consider  that 
Socrates  spurned  to  have  recourse  to  the  usual  means  and  forms 
adopted  by  those  accused  of  capital  crime,  and  to  gain  the  sym- 
pathy of  the  people  by  lamentations,  or  their  favor  by  flattery, 
that  he  in  proud  consciousness  of  his  innocence  defied  his  judges, 
it  becomes  rather  a  matter  of  wonder,  that  his  condemnation  was 
carried  by  a  majority  of  only  three  to  six  votes.  And  even  now 
he  might  have  escaped  the  sentence  to  death,  had  he  been  willing 
to  bow  to  the  will  of  the  sovereign  people  for  the  sake  of  a  com- 
mutation of  his  punishment.  But  as  he  spurned  to  set  a  value  upon 
himself,  by  proposing  another  punishment,  a  fine,  for  example, 
instead  of  the  one  moved  by  his  accuser,  because  this  would  be 
the  same  as  to  acknowledge  himself  guilty,  his  disdain  could  not 
fail  to  exasperate  the  easily  excited  Athenians,  and  no  farther  ex- 
planation is  needed  to  show  why  eighty  of  his  judges  who  had 
before  voted  for  his  innocence,  now  voted  for  his  death.  Such 
was  the  most  lamentable  result — a  result,  afterwards  most  deeply 
regretted  by  the  Athenians  themselves — of  an  accusation,  which 
at  the  outset  was  probably  only  intended  to  humble  the  aristo- 
cratic philosopher,  and  to  force  him  to  an  acknowledgment  of  the 
power  and  the  majesty  of  the  people. 

Hegel's  view  of  the  fate  of  Socrates,  that  it  was  the  result  of 
the  collision  of  equally  just  powers — the  Tragedy  of  Athens  as  he 
calls  it — and  that  guilt  and  innocence  were  shared  alike  on  both 
sides,  cannot  be  maintained  on  historical  grounds,  since  Socrates 
can  neither  be  regarded  exclusively  as  the  representative  of  the 
modern  spirit,  the  principle  of  freedom,  subjectivity,  the  concrete 
personality;  nor  his  judges,  as  the  representatives  of  the  old 
Athenian  unreflecting  morality.  The  first  cannot  be,  since 
Socrates,  if  his  principle  was  at  variance  with  the  old  Greek 
morality,  rested  nevertheless  so  far  on  the  basis  of  tradition,  that 
the  accusations  brought  against  him  in  this  respect  were  false  and 
groundless ;  and  the  last  cannot  be,  since  at  that  time,  after  the 
close  of  the  Peloponnesian  war,  the  old  morality  and  piety  had 
long  been  wanting  to  the  mass  of  the  people,  and  given  place  to 
the  modern  culture,  and  the  whole  process  against  Socrates  must 


60 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


be  regarded  rather  as  an  attempt  to  restore  by  violence,  in  con 
nectiou  with  the  old  constitution,  the  old  defunct  morality.  The 
fault  is  not  therefore  the  same  on  both  sides,  and  it  must  be  held, 
that  Socrates  fell  a  victim  to  a  misunderstanding,  and  to  an  un- 
justifiable reaction  of  public  sentiment. 

4.  The  "Genius"  (Sai/xovtov)  of  Socrates. — Those  traces 
of  the  old  religious  sentiment,  which  have  been  handed  down  to 
us  from  so  many  different  sources,  and  are  certainly  not  to  be 
explained  from  a  bare  accommodation  to  the  popular  belief,  on 
the  part  of  the  philosopher,  and  which  distinguish  him  so  decidedly 
from  the  Sophists,  show  how  little  Socrates  is  really  to  be  regarded 
as  an  innovator  in  discipline  and  morals.  He  commends  the  art 
of  divination,  believes  in  dreams,  sacrifices  with  all  proper  care, 
speaks  of  the  gods,  of  their  omniscience,  omnipresence,  goodness, 
and  complete  sufficiency  in  themselves,  even  with  the  greatest 
reverence,  and,  at  the  close  of  his  defence,  makes  the  most  solemn 
asseveration  of  his  belief  in  their  existence.  In  keeping  with  his 
attaching  himself  in  this  way  to  the  popular  religion,  his  new 
principle,  though  in  its  results  hostile  to  all  external  authority, 
nevertheless  assumed  the  form  of  the  popular  belief  in  "  Demonic" 
signs  and  symbols.  These  suggestions  of  the  "  Demon  "  are  a 
knowledge,  which  is  at  the  same  time  connected  with  unconscious- 
ness. They  occupy  the  middle  ground  between  the  bare  external 
of  the  Greek  oracle,  and  the  purely  internal  of  the  spirit.  That 
Socrates  had  the  conception  of  a  particular  subject,  a  personal 
"  Demon,"  or  "  Genius,"  is  altogether  improbable.  Just  as  little 
can  these  "  Demonic "  signs,  this  inward  oracle,  whose  voice 
Socrates  professed  to  hear,  be  regarded  after  the  modern  accep- 
tation, simply  as  the  personification  of  the  conscience,  or  of  the 
practical  instinct,  or  of  the  individual  tact.  The  first  article  in 
the  form  of  accusation,  which  evidently  refers  to  this  very  point, 
shows  that  Socrates  did  not  speak  barely  metaphorically  of  this 
voice,  to  which  he  professed  to  owe  his  prophecies.  And  it  was 
not  solely  in  reference  to  those  higher  questions  of  decided  im- 
portance, that  Socrates  had  these  suggestions,  but  rather  and  pre- 
eminently with  respect  to  matters  of  mere  accident  and  arbitrary 


SOCRATES. 


61 


choice,  as  for  example,  whether,  and  when,  his  friends  should  set 
out  on  a  journey.  It  is  no  longer  possible  to  explain  the 
"  Demon  "  or  "  Genius  "  of  Socrates  on  psychological  grounds ; 
there  may  have  been  something  of  a  magnetic  character  about  it. 
It  is  possible  that  there  may  be  some  connection  between  this  and 
the  many  other  ecstatic  or  cataleptic  states,  which  are  related  of 
Socrates  in  the  Symposium  of  Plato. 

5.  The  Sources  of  the  Philosophy  of  Socrates. — Well 
known  is  the  old  controversy,  whether  the  picture  of  Socrates, 
drawn  by  Xenophon  or  by  Plato,  is  the  most  complete  and  true 
to  history,  and  which  of  the  two  men  is  to  be  considered  as  the 
more  reliable  source  for  obtaining  a  knowledge  of  his  philosophy. 
This  question  is  being  decided  more  and  more  in  favor  of  Xeno- 
phon. Grreat  pains  has  been  taken  in  former  as  in  later  times,  to 
bring  Xenophon's  Memorabilia  into  disrepute,  as  a  shallow  and 
insufficient  source,  because  their  plain,  and  any  thing  other  than 
speculative  contents,  seemed  to  furnish  no  satisfactory  ground 
for  such  a  revolution  in  the  world  of  mind  as  is  attributed  to 
Socrates,  or  for  the  splendor  which  invests  his  name  in  history, 
or  for  the  character  which  Plato  assigns  him ;  because  again  the 
Memorabilia  of  Xenophon  have  especially  an  apologetic  aim,  and 
their  defence  does  not  relate  so  much  to  the  philosopher  as  to  the 
man ;  and  finally,  because  they  have  been  supposed  to  have  the 
appearance  of  carrying  the  philosophical  over  into  the  unphilo- 
sophical  style  of  the  common  understanding.  A  distinction  has 
therefore  been  made  between  an  exoteric  and  an  esoteric 
Socrates,  obtaining  the  first  from  Xenophon,  the  latter  from  Plato. 
But  the  preference  of  Plato  to  Xenophon  has  in  the  first  place 
no  historical  right  in  its  favor,  since  Xenophon  appears  as  a  pro- 
per historian  and  claims  historical  credibility,  while  Plato  on  the 
other  hand  never  professes  to  be  an  historical  narrator,  save  in  a 
few  passages,  and  will  by  no  means  have  all  the  rest  which  he 
puts  in  the  mouth  of  Socrates  understood  as  his  authentic  ex- 
pressions and  discourse.  There  is,  therefore,  no  historical  reason 
for  preferring  the  representation  of  Socrates  which  is  given  by 
Plato.    In  the  second  place,  the  under-valuation  of  Xenophon 


62 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


rests,  for  the  most  part,  on  the  false  notion,  that  Socrates  had  a 
proper  philosophy,  i.  e.  a  speculative  system,  and  on  an  unhistorical 
mistaking  of  the  limits  by  which  the  philosophical  character  of 
Socrates  was  conditioned  and  restricted.  There  was  no  proper 
Socratic  doctrine,  but  a  Socratic  life ;  and,  just  on  this  ground, 
are  the  different  philosophical  tendencies  of  his  scholars  to  be 
explained. 

6.  The  Universal  Cilvracter  of  the  Philosophizx'NG  of 
Socrates. — The  philosophizing  of  Socrates  was  limited  and  re- 
stricted by  his  opposition,  partly  to  the  preceding,  and  partly  to 
the  Sophistic  philosophy. 

Philosophy  before  the  time  of  Socrates  had  been  in  its  essen- 
tial character  investigation  of  nature.  But  in  Socrates,  the 
human  mind,  for  the  first  time,  turned  itself  in  upon  itself,  upon 
its  own  being,  and  that  too  in  the  most  immediate  manner,  by 
conceiving  itself  as  active,  moral  spirit.  The  positive  philoso- 
phizing of  Socrates,  is  exclusively  of  an  ethical  character,  ex- 
clusively an  inquiry  into  the  nature  of  virtue,  so  exclusively,  and 
so  onesidedly,  that,  as  is  wont  to  be  the  case  upon  the  appearance 
of  a  new  principle,  it  even  expressed  a  contempt  for  the  striving 
of  the  entire  previous  period,  with  its  natural  philosophy,  and  its 
mathematics.  Setting  every  thing  under  the  stand-point  of  im- 
mediate moral  law,  Socrates  was  so  far  from  finding  any  object  iii 
"  irrational"  nature  worthy  of  study,  that  he  rather,  in  a  kind  of  gene- 
ral teleological  manner,  conceived  it  simply  in  the  light  of  external 
means  for  the  attainment  of  external  ends ;  yea,  he  would  not  even 
go  out  to  walk,  as  he  says  in  the  Phaedrus  of  Plato,  since  one  can 
learn  nothing  from  trees  and  districts  of  country.  Self-knowledge, 
the  Delphic  (yyco^t  aavrov)  appeared  to  him  the  only  object 
worthy  of  a  man,  as  the  starting-point  of  all  philosophy.  Knowl- 
edge of  every  other  kind,  he  pronounced  so  insignificant  and 
worthless,  that  he  was  wont  to  boast  of  his  ignorance,  and  to  de- 
clare that  he  excelled  other  men  in  wisdom  only  in  this,  t}».at  he 
was  conscious  of  his  own  ignorance.    (Plat.  Ap.  S.  21,  23.) 

The  other  side  of  the  Socratic  philosophizing,  is  its  opposition 
to  the  philosophy  of  the  time.    His  object,  as  is  well  understood, 


SOCRATES. 


63 


could  have  been  only  this,  to  place  himself  upon  the  same  positior. 
as  that  occupied  by  the  philosophy  of  the  Sophists,  and  overcome 
it  on  its  own  ground,  and  by  its  own  principles.  That  Socrates 
shared  in  the  general  position  of  the  Sophists,  and  even  had  msLuy 
features  of  external  resemblance  to  them — the  Socratic  irony,  for 
instance — has  been  remarked  above.  Many  of  his  assertions,  par- 
ticularly these  propositions,  that  no  man  knowingly  does  wrong, 
and  if  a  man  were  knowingly  to  lie,  or  to  do  some  other  wrong 
act,  still  he  would  be  better  than  he  who  should  do  the  same  un- 
consciously, at  first  sight  bear  a  purely  Sophistic  stamp.  The 
great  fundamental  thought  of  the  Sophistic  philosophy,  that  all 
moral  acting  must  be  a  conscious  act,  was  also  his.  But  whilst 
the  Sophists  made  it  their  object,  through  subjective  reflection  to 
confuse  and  to  break  up  all  stable  convictions,  to  make  all  rules  re- 
lating to  outward  conduct  impossible,  Socrates  had  recognized 
thinking  as  the  activity  of  the  universal  principle,  free,  objective 
thought  as  the  measure  of  all  things,  and,  therefore,  instead  of 
referring  moral  duties,  and  all  moral  action  to  the  fancy  and 
caprice  of  the  individual,  had  rather  referred  all  to  true  knowl- 
edge, to  the  essence  of  spirit.  It  was  this  idea  of  knowledge  that 
led  him  to  seek,  by  the  process  of  thought,  to  gain  a  conceivable 
objective  ground,  something  real,  abiding,  absolute,  independent  of 
the  arbitrary  volitions  of  the  subject,  and  to  hold  fast  to  uncon- 
ditioned moral  laws.  Hegel  expresses  the  same  opinion,  when  he 
says  that  Socrates  put  morality  from  ethical  grounds,  in  the  place 
of  the  morality  of  custom  and  habit.  Hegel  distinguishes 
morality,  as  conscious  right  conduct,  resting  on  reflection  and 
moral  principles,  from  the  morality  of  unsophisticated,  half-un- 
conscious virtue,  which  rests  on  the  compliance  with  prevailing 
custom.  The  logical  condition  of  this  ethical  striving  of  Socrates, 
was  the  determining  of  conceptions,  the  method  of  their  forma- 
tion. To  search  out  the  "  what "  of  every  thing  says  Xenophon 
(Mem.  TV.  6,  1.)  was  the  uninterrupted  care  of  Socrates,  and 
Aristotle  says  expressly  that  a  twofold  merit  must  be  ascribed  to 
him,  viz. :  the  forming  of  the  method  of  induction  and  the  giving 
of  strictly  logical  definitions, — the  two  elements  which  constitute 


64 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


the  basis  of  science.  How  these  two  elements  stand  connected 
with  the  principle  of  Socrates  we  shall  at  once  see. 

7,  The  Socratic  Method. — We  must  not  regard  the  Socratic 
method  as  we  are  accustomed  to  speak  of  method  in  our  day,  i.  e. 
as  something  which,  as  such,  was  distinctly  in  his  consciousness, 
and  which  he  abstracted  from  every  concrete  content,  but  it 
rather  had  its  growth  in  the  very  mode  of  his  philosophizing, 
which  was  not  directed  to  the  imparting  of  a  system  but  to  the 
education  of  the  subject  in  philosophical  thinking  and  life-.  It 
is  only  a  subjective  technicality  for  his  mode  of  instruction,  the 
peculiar  manner  of  his  philosophical,  familiar  life. 

The  Socratic  method  has  a  twofold  side,  a  negative  and  a  pos- 
itive one.  The  negative  side  is  the  well  known  Socratic  irony. 
The  philosopher  takes  the  attitude  of  ignorance,  and  would  appa- 
rently let  himself  be  instructed  by  those  with  whom  he  converses, 
but  through  the  questions  which  he  puts,  the  unexpected  conse- 
quences which  he  deduces,  and  the  contradictions  in  which  he 
involves  the  opposite  party,  he  soon  leads  them  to  see  that  their 
supposed  knowledge  would  only  entangle  and  confuse  them.  In 
the  embarrassment  in  which  they  now  find  themselves  placed,  and 
seeing  that  they  do  not  know  what  they  supposed,  this  supposed 
knowledge  completes  its  own  destruction,  and  the  subject  who 
had  pretended  to  wisdom  learns  to  distrust  his  previous  opinions 
and  firmly  held  notions.  "What  we  knew,  has  contradicted 
itself,"  is  the  refrain  of  the  most  of  these  conversations. 

This  result  of  the  Socratic  method  was  only  to  lead  the  sub- 
ject to  know  that  he  knew  nothing,  and  a  great  part  of  the  dia- 
logues of  Xenophon  and  Plato  go  no  farther  than  to  represent 
ostensibly  this  negative  result.  But  there  is  yet  another  element 
in  his  method  in  which  the  irony  loses  its  negative  appearance. 

The  positive  side  of  the  Socratic  method  is  the  so-called  ob- 
stetrics or  art  of  intellectual  midwifery.  Socrates  compares  him- 
self with  his  mother  Phaenarete,  a  midwife,  because  his  position 
was  rather  to  help  others  bring  forth  thoughts  than  to  produce 
them  himself,  and  because  he  took  upon  himself  to  distinguish  the 
birth  of  an  empty  thought  from  one  rich  in  its  content.  (Plato 


SOCRATES. 


65 


TheatcBtus^  p.  149.)  Through  this  art  of  midwifery  the  philoso- 
pher, by  his  assiduous  questioning,  by  his  interrogatory  dissection 
of  the  notions  of  him  with  whom  he  might  be  conversing,  knew 
how  to  elicit  from  him  a  thought  of  which  he  had  previously  been 
unconscious,  and  how  to  help  him  to  the  birth  of  a  new  thought. 
A  chief  means  in  this  operation  was  the  method  of  induction^  or 
the  leading  of  the  representation  to  a  conception.  The  philoso- 
pher, thus,  starting  from  some  individual,  concrete  case,  and  seiz- 
ing hold  of  the  most  common  notions  concerning  it,  and  finding 
illustrations  in  the  most  ordinary  and  trivial  occurrences,  knew 
how  to  remove  by  his  comparisons  that  which  was  individual,  and 
by  thus  separating  the  accidental  and  contingent  from  the  essen- 
tial, could  bring  up  to  consciousness  a  universal  truth  and  a  uni- 
versal determination, — in  other  words,  could  form  conceptions. 
In  order  e.  g.  to  find  the  conception  of  justice  or  valor,  he  would 
start  from  individual  examples  of  them,  and  from  these  deduce 
the  universal  character  or  conception  of  these  virtues.  From  this 
we  see  that  the  direction  of  the  Socratic  induction  was  to  gain 
logical  definitions.  I  define  a  conception  when  I  develope  what 
it  is,  its  essence,  its  content.  I  define  the  conception  of  justice 
when  I  set  up  the  common  property  and  logical  unity  of  all  its 
different  modes  of  manifestation.  Socrates  sought  to  go  no  far- 
ther than  this.  "  To  seek  for  the  essence  of  virtue,"  says  an 
Aristotelian  writing  {Eth.  I.  5),  "  Socrates  regarded  as  the 
problem  of  philosophy,  and  hence,  since  he  regarded  all  virtue  as 
a  knowing,  he  sought  to  determine  in  respect  of  justice  or  valor 
what  they  might  really  be,  i.  e.  he  investigated  their  essence  or 
conception."  From  this  it  is  very  easy  to  see  the  connection 
which  his  method  of  definitions  or  of  forming  conceptions  had 
with  his  practical  strivings.  He  went  back  to  the  conception  of 
every  individual  virtue,  e.  g.  justice,  only  because  he  was  con- 
vinced that  the  knowledge  of  this  conception,  the  knowledge  of  it 
for  every  individual  case,  was  the  surest  guide  for  every  moral 
relation.  Every  moral  action,  he  believed,  should  start  as  a  con- 
scious action  from  the  conception. 

From  this  we  might  characterize  the  Socratic  method  as  the 


66 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


skill  by  whiicli  a  certain  sum  of  given,  homogeneous  and  individual 
phenomena  was  taken,  and  their  logical  unity,  the  universal  prin- 
ciple which  lay  at  their  base,  inductively  found.  This  method 
presupposes  the  recognition  that  the  essence  of  the  objects  must 
be  comprehended  in  the  thought,  that  the  conception  is  the  true 
being  of  the  thing.  Hence  we  see  that  the  Platonic  doctrine  of 
ideas  is  only  the  objectifying  of  this  method  which  in  Socrates 
appears  no  farther  than  a  subjective  dexterity.  The  Platonic 
ideas  are  the  universal  conceptions  of  Socrates  posited  as  real 
individual  beings.  Hence  Aristotle  [Metaph.  XIII.  4)  most  fit- 
tingly characterizes  the  relation  between  the  Socratic  method  and 
the  Platonic  doctrine  of  ideas  with  the  words,  "Socrates  posits 
the  universal  conceptions  not  as  separate,  individual  substances, 
while  Plato  does  this,  and  names  them  ideas." 

8.  The  Socratic  Doctrine  concerning  Virtue. — The  single, 
positive  doctrinal  sentence  which  has  been  transmitted  us  from 
Socrates  is,  that  virtue  is  a  knowing, — that,  consequently,  nothing 
is  good  which  happens  without  discernment,  and  nothing  bad 
which  is  done  with  discernment,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  that 
no  man  is  voluntarily  vicious,  that  the  base  are  such  against  their 
will,  aye,  even  he  who  knowingly  does  wrong  is  better  than  he 
who  does  it  ignorantly,  because  in  the  latter  case,  morality  and 
true  knowledge  are  both  wanting,  while  in  the  former — if  such  a 
case  could  happen — morality  alone  is  violated.  Socrates  could 
not  conceive  how  a  man  should  know  the  good  and  yet  not  do  it ; 
it  was  to  him  a  logical  contradiction  that  the  man  who  sought  his 
own  well  being  should  at  the  same  time  knowingly  despise  it. 
Therefore,  with  him  the  good  action  followed  as  necessarily  from 
the  knowledge  of  the  good  as  a  logical  conclusion  from  its  pre- 
mise. 

The  sentence  that  virtue  is  a  knowing,  has  for  its  logical  con- 
sequence the  unity  of  virtue  and  for  its  practical  consequence  the 
teachableness  of  it.  With  these  three  propositions,  in  which 
every  thing  is  embraced  which  we  can  properly  term  the  Socratic 
philosophy,  Socrates  has  laid  the  first  foundation  stone  for  a 
Bcientific  treatment  of  ethics,  a  treatment  which  must  be  dated 


THE  PARTIAL  DISCIPLES  OF  SOCRATES. 


67 


first  from  him.  But  he  laid  only  the  foundation  stone,  for  on 
the  one  side  he  attempted  no  carrying  out  of  his  principle  into 
details,  nor  any  setting  up  of  a  concrete  doctrine  of  ethics,  but 
only,  after  the  ancient  manner,  referred  to  the  laws  of  states  and 
the  unwritten  laws  of  the  universal  human  order,  and  on  the  other 
side,  he  has  not  seldom  served  himself  with  utilitarian  motives  to 
establish  his  ethical  propositions,  in  other  words  he  has  referred 
to  the  external  advantages  and  useful  conseq[uences  of  virtue,  by 
which  the  purity  of  his  ethical  point  of  view  became  tarnished 


SECTION  XIII. 

THE  PARTIAL  DISCIPLES  OF  SOCRATES. 

1.  Their  relation  to  the  Socratic  Philosophy. — The 
death  of  Socrates  gave  to  his  life  an  ideal  perfection,  and  this  be- 
came an  animating  principle  which  had  its  working  in  many 
directions.  The  apprehension  of  him  as  an  ideal  type  forms  the 
common  character  of  the  immediate  Socratic  schools.  The  fun- 
damental thought,  that  men  should  have  one  universal  and  essen- 
tially true  aim,  they  all  received  from  Socrates ;  but  since  their 
master  left  no  complete  and  systematic  doctrine,  but  only  his 
many-sided  life  to  determine  the  nature  of  this  aim,  every  thing 
would  depend  upon  the  subjective  apprehension  of  the  personal 
character  of  Socrates,  and  of  this  we  should  at  the  outset  naturally 
expect  to  find  among  his  different  disciples  a  different  estimate. 
Socrates  had  numerous  scholars,  but  no  school.  Among  these, 
three  views  of  his  character  have  found  a  place  in  history.  That 
of  Antisthenes,  or  the  Cynical,  that  of  Aristippus,  or  the  Cyre- 
nian,  and  that  of  Euclid,  or  the  Megarian — three  modes  of  appre- 
hending him,  each  of  which  contains  a  true  element  of  the  So- 
cratic character,  but  all  of  which  separate  that  which  in  the 
master  was  a  harmonious  unity,  and  affirm  of  the  isolated 


G8 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


elements  that  which  could  be  truly  predicated  only  of  the  whole 
They  are  therefore,  one-sided,  and  give  of  Socratee  a  false  pic 
ture.  This,  however,  was  not  wholly  their  fault;  but  in  that 
Aristippus  was  forced  to  go  back  to  the  theory  of  knowledge  of 
Protagoras,  and  Euclid  to  the  metaphysics  of  the  Eleatics,  they 
rather  testify  to  the  subjective  character  and  to  the  want  of 
method  and  system  of  the  Socratic  philosophy,  and  exhibit  in 
their  defects  and  one-sidedness,  in  part,  only  the  original  weak- 
ness which  belongs  to  the  doctrine  of  their  master. 

2,  Antisthenes  and  the  Cynics. — As  a  strictly  literal  ad- 
herent of  the  doctrine  of  Socrates,  and  zealously  though  grossly, 
and  often  with  caricature  imitating  his  method,  Antisthenes  stands 
nearest  his  master.  In  early  life  a  disciple  of  Grorgias,  and  him- 
self a  teacher  of  the  Sophistic  philosophy,  he  subsequently  became 
an  inseparable  attendant  of  Socrates,  after  whose  death  he  founded 
a  school  in  the  Cynosarges,  whence  his  scholars  and  adherents 
took  the  name  of  Cynics,  though  according  to  others  this  name 
was  derived  from  their  mode  of  life.  The  doctrine  of  Antis- 
thenes is  only  an  abstract  expression  for  the  Socratic  ideal  of 
virtue.  Like  Socrates  he  considered  virtue  the  final  cause  of 
men,  regarding  it  also  as  knowledge  or  science,  and  thus  as  an 
object  of  instruction ;  but  the  ideal  of  virtue  as  he  had  beheld  it 
in  the  person  of  Socrates  was  realized  in  his  estimation  only  in 
the  absence  of  every  need  (in  his  appearance  he  imitated  a  beg- 
gar with  staff  and  scrip)  and  hence  in  the  disregarding  of  all 
former  intellectual  interests  ;  virtue  with  him  aims  only  to  avoid 
evil,  and  therefore  has  no  need  of  dialectical  demonstrations,  but 
only  of  Socratic  vigor ;  the  wise  man,  according  to  him,  is  self- 
sufficient,  independent  of  everything,  indifferent  in  respect  of 
marriage,  family,  and  the  public  life  of  society,  as  also  in  respect 
of  wealth,  honor,  and  enjoyment.  In  this  ideal  of  Antisthenes, 
which  is  more  negative  than  positive,  we  miss  entirely  the  genial 
humanity  and  the  universal  susceptibility  of  his  master,  and  still 
more  a  cultivation  of  those  fruitful  dialectic  elements  which  the 
Socratic  philosophizing  contained.  With  a  more  decided  con- 
tempt for  all  knowledge,  and  a  still  greater  scorn  of  all  the  cus- 


THE  PARTIAL  DISCIPLES  OF  SOCRATES. 


69 


toms  of  society,  the  later  Cynicism  became  frequently  a  repulsive 
and  sliameful  caricature  of  the  Socratic  spirit.  This  was  especially 
the  case  with  Diogenes  of  Sinope,  the  only  one  of  his  disciples 
whom  Antisthenes  suffered  to  remain  with  him.  In  their  high 
estimation  of  virtue  and  philosophy  these  Cynics,  who  have  been 
suitably  styled  the  Capuchins  of  the  Grecian  world,  preserved  a 
trace  of  the  original  Socratic  philosophy,  but  they  sought  virtue 
"  in  the  shortest  way,"  in  a  life  according  to  nature  as  they  them 
selves  expressed  it,  that  is,  in  shutting  out  the  outer  world,  in  at- 
taining a  complete  independence,  and  absence  of  every  need,  and 
in  renouncing  art  and  science  as  well  as  every  determinate  aim. 
To  the  wise  man  said  they  nothing  should  go  amiss ;  he  should  be 
mighty  over  every  need  and  desire,  free  from  the  restraints  of  civil 
law  and  of  custom,  and  of  equal  privileges  with  the  gods.  An 
easy  life,  said  Diogenes,  is  assigned  by  the  gods  to  that  man  who 
limits  himself  to  his  necessities,  and  this  true  philosophy  may  be 
attained  by  every  one,  through  perseverance  and  the  power  of  self- 
denial.  Philosophy  and  philosophical  interest  is  there  none  in 
this  school  of  beggars.  All  that  is  related  of  Diogenes  are  anec- 
dotes and  sarcasms. 

We  see  here  how  the  ethics  of  the  Cynic  school  lost  itself  in 
entirely  negative  statements,  a  consequence  naturally  resulting 
from  the  fact  that  the  original  Socratic  conception  of  virtue 
lacked  a  concrete  positive  content,  and  was  not  systematically  car- 
ried out.    Cynicism  is  the  negative  side  of  the  Socratic  doctrine. 

3.  Aristippus  and  the  Cyrenians. — Aristippus  of  Cyrene, 
numbered  till  the  death  of  Socrates  among  his  adherents,  is  repre- 
sented by  Aristotle  as  a  Sophist,  and  this  with  propriety,  since  he 
received  money  for  his  instructions.  He  appears  in  Xenophon  as 
a  man  devoted  to  pleasure.  The  adroitness  with  which  he  adapted 
himself  to  every  circumstance,  and  the  knowledge  of  human  na- 
ture by  Avhich  in  every  condition  he  knew  how  to  provide  means 
to  satisfy  his  desire  for  good  living  and  luxury,  were  well  known 
among  the  ancients.  Brought  in  contact  with  the  government,  he 
kept  himself  aloof  from  its  cares  lest  he  should  become  dependent; 
he  spent  most  of  his  time  abroad  in  order  to  free  himself  from 


70 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


every  restraint ;  lie  made  it  his  rule  that  circumstances  should  be 
dependent  upon  him,  while  he  should  be  independent  of  them. 
Though  such  a  man  seems  little  worthy  of  the  name  of  a  Socrati- 
cist,  yet  has  he  two  points  of  contact  with  his  master  which  should 
not  be  overlooked,  Socrates  had  called  virtue  and  happiness  co- 
ordinately  the  highest  end  of  man,  i.  e.  he  had  indeed  asserted 
most  decidedly  the  idea  of  a  moral  action,  but  because  he  brought 
this  forward  only  in  an  undeveloped  and  abstract  form,  he  was 
only  able  in  concrete  cases  to  establish  the  obligation  of  the  moral 
law  in  a  utilitarian  way,  by  appealing  to  the  benefit  resulting  from 
the  practice  of  virtue.  This  side  of  the  Socratic  principle 
Aristippus  adopted  for  his  own,  affirming  that  pleasure  is  the  ulti- 
mate end  of  life,  and  the  highest  good.  Moreover,  this  pleasure, 
as  Aristippus  regards  it,  is  not  happiness  as  a  condition  embracing 
the  whole  life,  nor  pleasure  reduced  to  a  system,  but  is  only  the 
individual  sensation  of  pleasure  which  the  body  receives,  and  in 
this  all  determinations  of  moral  worth  entirely  disappear ;  but  in 
that  Aristippus  recommends  knowledge,  self-government,  temper- 
ance, and  intellectual  culture  as  means  for  acquiring  and  preserv- 
ing enjoyment,  and,  therefore,  makes  a  cultivated  mind  necessary 
to  judge  respecting  a  true  satisfaction,  he  shows  that  the  Socratic 
spirit  was  not  yet  wholly  extinguished  within  him,  and  that  the 
name  of  pseudo-Socraticist  which  Schleiermacher  gives  him,  hardly 
belongs  to  him. 

The  other  leaders  of  the  Cyrenian  school,  Hegesias^  Theodo- 
rus,  Anniceris,  we  can  here  only  name.  The  farther  development 
of  this  school  is  wholly  occupied  in  more  closely  defining  the  na- 
ture of  pleasure,  i.  e.  in  determining  whether  it  is  to  be  appre- 
hended as  a  momentary  sensation,  or  as  an  enduring  condition 
embracing  the  whole  life ;  whether  it  belonged  to  the  mind  or  the 
body,  whether  an  isolated  individual  could  possess  it,  or  whether 
it  is  found  alone  in  the  social  relations  of  life  ;  whether  we  should 
regard  it  as  positive  or  negative,  (t.  e.  simply  the  absence  of  pain.) 

4.  Euclid  and  the  Megarians. — The  union  of  the  dialecti- 
cal and  the  ethical  is  a  common  character  in  all  the  partial 
Socratic  schools ;  the  difierence  consists  only  in  this,  that  in  the 


THE  PARTIAL  DISCIPLES  OF  SOCRATES. 


71 


one  the  ethical  is  made  to  do  service  to  the  dialectical,  and  that  in 
the  other,  the  dialectical  stands  in  subjection  to  the  ethical.  The 
former  is  especially  true  of  the  Megarian  school,  whose  essential 
peculiarity  was  pointed  out  by  the  ancients  themselves  as  a  com- 
bination of  the  Socratic  and  Eleatic  principles.  The  idea  of  the 
good  is  on  the  ethical  side  the  same  as  the  idea  of  being  on  the 
physical ;  it  was,  therefore,  only  an  application  to  ethics  of  the 
Eleatic  view  and  method  when  Euclid  called  the  good  pure  being, 
and  the  not-good,  not-being.  "What  is  farther  related  of  Euclid  is 
obscure,  and  may  here  be  omitted.  The  Megarian  school  was 
kept  up  under  different  leaders  after  his  death,  but  without  living 
force,  and  without  the  independent  activity  of  an  organic  develop- 
ment. As  hedonism  (the  philosophical  doctrine  of  the  Cyreneans 
that  pleasure  is  the  chief  good)  led  the  way  to  the  doctrine  of 
Epicurus,  and  cynicism  was  the  bridge  toward  the  Stoic,  so  the 
later  Megaric  development  formed  the  transition  point  to  scepti- 
cism. Directing  its  attention  ever  more  exclusively  towards  the 
culture  of  the  formal  and  logical  method  of  argument,  it  left 
entirely  out  of  view  the  moral  thoughts  of  Socrates.  Its  sophis- 
tries and  quiddities  which  were,  for  the  most  part,  only  plays  of 
word  and  wit,  were  widely  known  and  noted  among  the  ancients. 

5.  Plato,  as  the  complete  Socraticist. — The  attempts  thus 
far  to  build  upon  the  foundation  pillars  of  the  Socratic  doctrine, 
started  without  a  vigorous  germinating  principle,  and  ended  fruit- 
lessly. Plato  was  the  only  one  of  his  scholars  who  has  approached 
and  represented  the  whole  Socrates.  Starting  from  the  Socratic 
idea  of  knowledge  he  brought  into  one  focus  the  scattered  ele- 
ments and  rays  of  truth  which  could  be  collected  from  his  master 
or  from  the  philosophers  preceding  him,  and  gave  to  philosophy  a 
systematic  completeness.  Socrates  had  affirmed  the  principle  that 
conception  is  the  true  being  and  the  only  actual,  and  had  urged  to 
a  knowledge  according  to  the  conception ;  but  these  positions  were 
no  farther  developed.  His  philosophy  is  not  yet  a  system,  but  is 
only  the  first  impulse  toward  a  philosophical  development  and 
method.    Plato  is  the  first  who  has  approached  a  systematic  rep- 


72 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


resentation  and  development  of  tlie  ideal  world  of  conceptions 
true  in  themselves. 

The  Platonic  system  is  Socrates  objectified,  the  blending  and 
reconciling  of  preceding  philosophy. 


SECTION  XIY. 

PLATO. 

I.  Plato^s  Life.  1.  His  Youth. — Plato,  the  son  of  Aristo, 
of  a  noble  Athenian  family,  was  born  in  the  year  429  B,  C.  It  was 
the  year  of  the  death  of  Pericles,  the  second  year  of  the  Pelopon- 
nesian  war,  so  fatal  to  Athens.  Born  in  the  centre  of  Grecian 
culture  and  industry,  and  descended  from  an  old  and  noble  family, 
he  received  a  corresponding  education,  although  no  farther  tidings 
of  this  have  been  transmitted  to  us,  than  the  insignificant  names 
of  his  teachers.  That  the  youth  growing  up  under  such  circum- 
stances should  choose  the  seclusion  of  a  philosophic  life  rather 
than  a  political  career  may  seem  strange,  since  many  and  favor- 
able opportunities  for  the  latter  course  lay  open  before  him. 
Critias,  one  of  the  thirty  tyrants,  was  the  cousin  of  his  mother, 
and  Charmides,  who  subsequently,  under  the  oligarchic  rule  at 
Athens,  found  his  death  at  Thrasybulus  on  the  same  day  with 
Critias,  was  his  uncle.  Notwithstanding  this,  he  is  never  known 
to  have  appeared  a  single  time  as  a  public  speaker  in  the  assembly 
of  the  people.  In  view  of  the  rising  degeneracy  and  increasing 
political  corruption  of  his  native  land,  he  was  too  proud  to  court 
for  himself  the  favor  of  the  many-headed  Demos ;  and  more  at- 
tached to  Doricism  than  to  the  democracy  and  practice  of  the 
Attic  public  life,  he  chose  to  make  science  his  chief  pursuit,  rather 
than  as  a  patriot  to  struggle  in  vain  against  unavoidable  disaster, 
and  become  a  martyr  to  his  political  opinions.  He  regarded  the 
Athenian  state  as  lost,  and  to  hinder  its  inevitable  ruin  he  would 
not  bring  a  useless  offering. 


PLATO. 


73 


2.  His  Years  of  Discipline. — A  youth  of  twenty,  Plato  came 
to  Socrates,  in  whose  intercourse  he  spent  eight  years.  Besides 
a  few  doubtful  anecdotes,  nothing  is  known  more  particularly  of 
this  portion  of  his  history.  In  Xenophon's  Memorabilia  (III.  6) 
Plato  is  only  once  cursorily  mentioned,  but  this  in  a  way  that 
indicates  an  intimate  relation  between  the  scholar  and  his  master. 
Plato  himself  in  his  dialogues  has  transmitted  nothing  concerning 
his  personal  relations  to  Socrates;  only  once  {Fhced.  p.  59)  he 
names  himself  among  the  intimate  friends  of  Socrates.  But  the 
influence  which  Socrates  exerted  upon  him,  how  he  recognized  in 
him  the  complete  representation  of  a  wise  man,  how  he  found  not 
only  in  his  doctrine  but  also  in  his  life  and  action  the  most  fruit- 
ful philosophic  germs,  the  significance  which  the  personal  character 
of  his  master  as  an  ideal  type  had  for  him — all  this  we  learn  with 
sufficient  accuracy  from  his  writings,  where  he  places  his  own 
incomparably  more  developed  philosophical  system  in  the  mouth 
of  his  master,  whom  he  makes  the  centre  of  his  dialogues  and  the 
leader  of  his  discourses 

3.  His  Years  of"  Travel.— After  the  death  of  Socrates  399 
B.  C,  in  the  thirtieth  year  of  his  age,  Plato,  fearing  lest  he  also 
should  be  met  by  the  incoming  reaction  against  philosophy,  left, 
in  company  with  other  Socraticists,  his  native  city,  and  betook 
himself  to  Euclid,  his  former  fellow-scholar,  the  founder  of  the 
Megaric  school  (cf.  §  XIII.  4)  at  Megara.  Up  to  this  time  a  pure 
Socraticist,  he  became  greatly  animated  and  energized  by  his 
intercourse  with  the  Megarians,  among  whom  a  peculiar  philoso- 
phical direction,  a  modification  of  Socraticism,  was  already  asserted. 
We  shall  see  farther  on  the  influence  of  this  residence  at  Megara 
upon  the  foundation  of  his  philosophy,  and  especially  upon  the 
elaboration  and  confirmation  of  his  doctrine  of  Ideas.  One  whole 
period  of  his  literary  activity  and  an  entire  group  of  his  dialogues, 
can  only  be  satisfactorily  explained  by  the  intellectual  stimulus 
gained  at  this  place.  From  Megara,  Plato  visited  Cyrene,  Egypt, 
Magna-Grecia  and  Sicily.  In  Magna-Grecia  he  became  acquainted 
with  the  Pythagorean  philosophy,  which  was  then  in  its  highest 
bloom.    His  abode  among  the  Pythagoreans  had  a  marked  effect 

4 


74 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


upon  liim ;  as  a  man  it  made  him  more  practical,  and  increased 
his  zest  for  life  and  his  interest  in  public  life  and  social  inter- 
course ;  as  a  philosopher  it  furnished  him  with  a  new  incitement 
to  science,  and  new  motives  to  literary  labor.  The  traces  of  the 
Pythagoreoan  philosophy  may  be  seen  through  all  the  last  period 
of  his  literary  life ;  especially  his  aversion  to  public  and  political 
life  was  greatly  softened  by  his  intercourse  with  the  Pythagoreans. 
While  in  the  Theatsetus,  he  affirmed  most  positively  the  incom- 
patibility of  philosophy  with  public  life,  we  find  in  his  later  dia- 
logues, especially  in  the  Eepublic  and  also  in  the  Statesman — 
upon  which  Pythagoreanism  seems  already  to  have  had  an  influ- 
ence— a  returning  favor  for  the  actual  world,  and  the  well-known 
sentence  that  the  ruler  must  be  a  philosopher  is  an  expression 
very  characteristic  of  this  change.  His  visit  to  Sicily  gave  him 
the  acquaintance  of  the  elder  Dionysius  and  Dion  his  brother-in- 
law,  but  the  philosopher  and  the  tyrant  had  little  in  common. 
Plato  is  said  to  have  incurred  his  displeasure  to  so  high  a  degree, 
that  his  life  was  in  danger.  After  about  ten  years  spent  in  travel, 
he  returned  to  Athens  in  the  fortieth  year  of  his  age,  (389  or  388 
B.  C.) 

4.  Plato  as  Head  of  the  Academy  ;  His  Years  of  Instruc- 
tion.— On  his  return,  Plato  surrounded  himself  with  a  circle  of 
pupils.  The  place  where  he  taught  was  known  as  the  academy,  a 
gymnasium  outside  of  Athens  where  Plato  had  inherited  a  garden 
from  his  father.  Of  his  school  and  of  his  later  life,  we  have  only 
the  most  meagre  accounts.  His  life  passed  evenly  along,  inter- 
rupted only  by  a  second  and  third  visit  to  Sicily,  where  mean- 
while the  younger  Dionysius  had  come  to  the  throne.  This  second 
and  third  residence  of  Plato  at  the  court  of  Syracuse  abounds  in 
vicissitudes,  and  shows  us  the  philosopher  in  a  great  variety  of 
conditions  {cf.  Plutarch's  Life  of  Dion) ;  but  to  us,  in  estimating 
his  philosophical  character,  it  is  of  interest  only  for  the  attempt, 
which,  as  seems  probable  from  all  accounts,  he  there  made  to 
realize  his  ideal  of  a  moral  state,  and  by  the  philosophical  educa- 
tion of  the  new  ruler  to  unite  philosophy  and  the  reins  of  govern- 
ment in  one  and  the  same  hand,  or  at  least  in  some  way  by  means 


PLATO. 


75 


of  philosophy  to  achieve  a  healthy  change  in  the  Sicilian  state 
constitution.  His  efforts  were  however  fruitless ;  the  circumstances 
were  not  propitious,  and  the  character  of  the  young  Dionysius, 
who  was  one  of  those  mediocre  natures  who  strive  after  renown 
and  distinction,  hut  are  capable  of  nothing  profound  and  earnest, 
deceived  the  expectations  concerning  him  which  Plato,  according 
to  Dion's  account,  thought  he  had  reason  to  entertain. 

When  we  look  at  Plato's  philosophical  labors  in  the  academy, 
we  are  struck  with  the  different  relations  to  public  life  which 
philosophy  already  assumes.  Instead  of  carrying  philosophy,  like 
Socrates,  into  the  streets  and  public  places  and  making  it  there  a 
subject  of  social  conversation  with  any  one  who  desired  it,  he  lived 
and  labored  entirely  withdrawn  from  the  movements  of  the  public, 
satisfied  to  influence  the  pupils  who  surrounded  him.  In  pre- 
cisely the  measure  in  which  philosophy  becomes  a  system  and  the 
systematic  form  is  seen  to  be  essential,  does  it  lose  its  popular 
character  and  begin  to  demand  a  scientific  training,  and  to  become 
a  topic  for  the  school,  an  esoteric  affair.  Yet  such  was  the  respect 
for  the  name  of  a  philosopher,  and  especially  for  the  name  of 
Plato,  that  requests  were  made  to  him  by  different  states  to  com- 
pose for  them  a  book  of  laws,  a  work  which  in  some  instances  it 
was  said  was  actually  performed.  Attended  by  a  retinue  of  de- 
voted disciples,  among  whom  were  even  women  disguised  as  men, 
and  receiving  reiterated  demonstrations  of  respect,  he  reached 
the  age  of  eighty-one  years,  with  his  powers  of  mind  unweakened 
to  the  latest  moment. 

The  close  of  his  life  seems  to  have  been  clouded  by  disturb- 
ances and  divisions  which  arose  in  his  school  under  the  lead  of 
Aristotle.  Engaged  in  writing,  or  as  others  state  it  at  a  mar- 
riage feast,  death  came  upon  him  as  a  gentle  sleep,  348  B.  C. 
His  remains  were  buried  in  the  Ceramicus,  not  far  from  the 
academy. 

II.  The  Inner  Development  of  the  Platonic  Philosophy 
AND  Writings. — That  the  Platonic  philosophy  has  a  real  develop- 
ment, that  it  should  not  be  apprehended  as  a  perfectly  finished 
system  to  which  the  different  writings  stand  related  as  constitu- 


76 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


ent  elements,  but  that  these  are  rather  steps  of  this  inner  de- 
velopment, as  it  -were  stages  passed  over  in  the  philosophical 
journejings  of  the  philosopher — is  a  view  of  the  highest  import- 
ance for  the  true  estimate  of  Plato's  literary  labors. 

Plato's  philosophical  and  literary  labors  may  be  divided  into 
three  periods,  which  we  can  characterize  in  different  ways.  Look- 
ing at  them  in  a  chronological  or  biographical  respect,  we  might 
call  them  respectively  the  periods  of  his  years  of  discipline,  of 
travel,  of  instruction,  or  if  we  view  them  in  reference  to  the  pre- 
vailing external  influence  under  which  they  were  formed,  they 
might  be  termed  the  Socratic,  Heraclitic-Eleatic,  and  the  Pytha- 
gorean ;  or  if  we  looked  at  the  content  alone,  we  might  term  them 
the  Anti-Sophistic-Ethic,  the  Dialectic  or  mediating,  and  the  sys- 
tematic or  constructive  periods. 

The  First  Period — the  Socratic — is  marked  externally  by 
the  predominance  of  the  dramatic  element,  and  in  reference  to  its 
philosophical  stand-point,  by  an  adherence  to  the  method  and 
the  fundamental  principles  of  the  Socratic  doctrine.  Not  yet 
accurately  informed  of  the  results  of  former  inquiries,  and  rather 
repelled  from  the  study  of  the  history  of  philosophy  than  attract- 
ed to  it  by  the  character  of  the  Socratic  philosophizing,  Plato 
confined  himself  to  an  analytical  treatment  of  conceptions,  partic- 
ularly of  the  conception  of  virtue,  and  to  a  reproducing  of  his 
master,  which,  though  something  more  than  a  mere  recital  of  ver- 
bal recollections,  had  yet  no  philosophical  independence.  His 
Socrates  exhibits  the  same  view  of  life  and  the  same  scientific 
stand-point  which  the  historical  Socrates  of  Xenophon  had  had. 
His  efforts  were  thus,  like  those  of  his  contemporary  fellow  disci- 
ples, directed  prominently  toward  practical  wisdom.  His  conflicts 
however,  like  those  of  Socrates,  had  far  more  weight  against  the 
prevailing  want  of  science  and  the  shallow  sophisms  of  the  day 
than  for  the  opposite  scientific  directions.  The  whole  period 
bears  an  eclectic  and  hortatory  character.  The  highest  point  in 
•which  the  dialogues  of  this  group  culminate  is  the  attempt  which 
at  the  same  time  is  found  in  the  Socratic  doctrine  to  determine 


PLATO. 


77 


the  certainty  of  an  absolute  content  (of  an  objective  reality)  to 
the  good. 

The  history  of  the  development  of  the  Platonic  philosophy 
would  assume  a  very  different  form  if  the  view  of  some  modern 
scholars  respecting  the  date  of  the  Phasdrus  were  correct.  If,  as 
they  claim,  the  Phsedrus  were  Plato's  earliest  work,  this  circum- 
stance would  betray  from  the  outset  an  entirely  different  course 
of  culture  for  him  than  we  could  suppose  in  a  mere  scholar  of 
Socrates.  The  doctrine  in  this  dialogue  of  the  pre-existence  of 
souls,  and  their  periodical  transmigrations,  of  the  relation  of 
earthly  beauty  with  heavenly  truth,  of  divine  inspiration  in  con- 
trast to  human  wisdom,  the  conception  of  love, — these  and  other 
Pythagorean  ingredients  are  all  so  distinct  from  the  original  So- 
cratic  doctrine  that  we  must  transfer  the  most  of  that  which  Plato 
has  creatively  produced  during  his  whole  philosophical  career,  to 
the  beginning  of  his  philosophical  development.  The  improba- 
bility of  this,  and  numerous  other  grounds  of  objection,  claim  a 
far  later  composition  for  this  dialogue.  Setting  aside  for  the  pre- 
sent the  Phasdrus,  the  Platonic  development  assumes  the  follow- 
ing form : 

Among  the  earliest  works  (if  they  are  genuine)  are  the  small 
dialogues  which  treat  of  Socratic  questions  and  themes  in  a  So- 
cratic  way.  Of  these  e.  g.  the  Charmides  discusses  temperance, 
the  Lysis  friendship,  the  Laches  valor,  the  lesser  Hippias  know- 
ing and  wilful  wrong-doing,  the  first  Alcibiades,  the  moral  and 
intellectual  qualifications  of  a  statesman,  &c.  The  immaturity 
and  the  crudeness  of  these  dialogues,  the  use  of  scenic  means 
which  have  only  an  external  relation  to  the  content,  the  scanti- 
ness and  want  of  independence  in  the  content,  the  indirect  man- 
ner of  investigation  which  lacks  a  satisfactory  and  positive  result, 
the  formal  and  analytical  treatment  of  the  conceptions  discussed 
— all  these  features  indicate  the  early  character  of  these  minor 
dialogues. 

The  Protagoras  may  be  taken  as  a  proper  type  of  the  Socratic 
period.  Since  this  dialogue,  though  directing  its  whole  polemic 
against  the  Sophistic  philosophy,  confined  itself  almost  exclusively 


^3 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


to  tlic  outward  manifestation  of  this  system,  to  its  influence  on 
its  age  and  its  method  of  instruction  in  opposition  io  that  of  Soc- 
rates, without  entering  into  the  ground  and  philosophical  charac- 
ter of  the  doctrine  itself,  and,  still  farther,  since,  when  it  comes 
in  a  strict  sense  to  philosophize,  it  confines  itself,  in  an  indirect 
investigation,  to  the  Socratic  conception  of  virtue  according  to  its 
different  sides  (virtue  as  knowing,  its  unity  and  its  teachableness, 
cf.  ^  XII.  8), — it  represents  in  the  clearest  manner  the  tendency, 
character  and  want  of  the  first  period  of  Plato's  literary  life. 

The  Gorgias,  written  soon  after  the  death  of  Socrates,  repre- 
sents the  third  and  highest  stage  of  this  period.  Directed  against 
the  Sophistical  identification  of  pleasure  and  virtue,  of  the  good 
and  of  the  agreeable,  i.  e.  against  the  affirmation  of  an  absolute 
moral  relativity,  this  dialogue  maintains  the  proof  that  the  good, 
far  from  owing  its  origin  only  to  the  right  of  the  stronger,  and 
thus  to  the  arbitrariness  of  the  subject,  has  in  itself  an  indepen- 
dent reality  and  objective  validity,  and,  consequently,  alone  is 
truly  useful,  and  thus,  therefore,  the  measure  of  pleasure  must 
follow  the  higher  measure  of  the  good.  In  this  direct  and  posi- 
tive polemic  against  the  Sophistic  doctrine  of  pleasure,  in  its  ten- 
dency to  a  view  of  the  good  as  something  firm  and  abiding,  and 
secure  against  all  subjective  arbitrariness,  consists  prominently 
the  advance  which  the  Grorgias  makes  over  the  Protagoras. 
^  In  the  first  Socratic  period  the  Platonic  philosophizing  be- 
came ripe  and  ready  for  the  reception  of  Eleatic  and  Pythagorean 
categories.  To  grapple  by  means  of  these  categories  with  the 
higher  questions  of  philosophy,  and  so  to  free  the  Socratic  philos- 
ophy from  its  so  close  connection  with  practical  life,  was  the  task 
of  the  second  period. 

The  Second  Period — the  dialectic  or  the  Megaric — is  marked 
externally,  by  a  less  prominence  of  form  and  poetic  contempla- 
tion, and  not  unfrequently  indeed,  by  obscurity  and  difficulties  of 
Btyle,  and  internally,  by  the  attempt  to  give  a  satisfactory  media- 
tion for  the  Eleatic  doctrine  and  a  dialectic  foundation  for  the 
doctrine  of  ideas. 

By  his  exile  at  Megara,  and  his  journeys  to  Italy, -Plato  be- 


PLATO. 


79 


came  acquainted  Tvith  other  and  opposing  philosophical  directions, 
from  which  he  must  now  separate  himself  in  order  to  elevate  the 
Socratic  doctrine  to  its  true  significance.  It  was  now  that  he 
first  learned  to  know  the  philosophic  theories  of  the  earlier  sages, 
for  whose  study  the  necessary  means  could  not  at  that  period,  so 
wanting  in  literary  publicity,  be  found  at  Athens.  By  his  sepa- 
ration from  these  varying  stand-points,  as  his  older  fellow  pupils 
had  already  striven  to  do,  he  attempted  striding  over  tne  narrow 
limits  of  ethical  philosophizing,  to  reach  the  final  ground  of  know- 
ing, and  to  carry  out  the  art  of  forming  conceptions  as  brought 
forward  by  Socrates,  to  a  science  of  conceptions,  i.  e.  to  the  doc- 
trine of  ideas.  That  all  human  acting  depends  upon  knowing, 
and  that  all  thinking  depends  upon  the  conception,  were  results 
to  which  Plato  might  already  have  attained  through  the  scientific 
generalization  of  the  Socratic  doctrine  itself,  but  now  to  bring 
this  Socratic  wisdom  within  the  circle  of  speculative  thinking,  to 
establish  dialectically  that  the  conception  in  its  simple  unity  is 
that  which  abides  in  the  change  of  phenomena,  to  disclose  the 
fundamental  principles  of  knowledge  which  had  been  evaded  by 
Socrates,  to  grasp  the  scientific  theories  of  the  opposers  direct  in 
their  scientific  grounds,  and  follow  them  out  in  all  their  ramifica- 
tions,— this  is  the  problem  which  the  Megaric  family  of  dialogues 
attempts  to  solve. 

The  Theatsetus  stands  at  the  head  of  this  group.  This  is 
chiefly  directed  against  the  Protagorean  theory  of  knowledge, 
against  the  identification  of  the  thinking  and  the  sensible  percep- 
tion, or  against  the  claim  of  an  objective  relativity  of  all  knowl- 
edge. As  the  Grorgias  before  it  had  sought  to  establish  the  in- 
dependent being  of  the  ethical,  so  does  the  Theatastus  ascending 
from  the  ethical  to  the  theoretical,  endeavor  to  prove  an  indepen 
dent  being  and  objective  reality  for  the  logical  conceptions  which 
lie  at  the  ground  of  all  representation  and  thinking,  in  a  word,  to 
prove  the  objectivity  of  truth,  the  fact  that  there  lies  a  province 
of  thought  immanent  in  the  thinking  and  independent  of  the  per 
3eptions  of  the  senses.    These  conceptions,  whose  objective  reality 


80 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


is  thus  affirmed,  are  those  of  a  species,  likeness  and  unlikenesa, 
sameness  and  difference,  &c. 

The  Theatsetus  is  followed  by  the  trilogy  of  the  Sophist,  the 
Statesman,  and  the  Philosopher,  which  completes  the  Megaric 
group  of  dialogues.  The  first  of  these  dialogues  examines  the 
conception  of  appearance,  that  i?  of  the  not-being,  the  last  (for 
which  the  Parmenides  may  be  taken)  the  conception  of  being. 
Both  dialogues  are  especially  directed  to  the  Eleatic  doctrine. 
After  Plato  had  recognized  the  conception  in  its  simple  unity  as 
that  which  abides  in  the  change  of  phenomena,  his  attention  was 
naturally  turned  towards  the  Eleatics,  who  in  an  opposite  way  had 
attained  the  similar  result  that  in  unity  consists  all  true  substan- 
tiality, and  to  multiplicity  as  such  no  true  being  belongs.  In 
order  more  easily  on  the  one  side  to  carry  out  this  fundamental 
thought  of  the  Eleatic  to  its  legitimate  result,  in  which  the 
Megarians  had  already  preceded  him,  he  was  obliged  to  give  a 
metaphysical  substance  to  his  abstract  conceptions  of  species,  i.  e. 
ideas.  But  on  the  other  side,  he  could  not  agree  with  the  inflex- 
ibility and  exclusiveness  of  the  Eleatic  unity,  unless  he  would 
wholly  sacrifice  the  multiplicity  of  things ;  he  was  rather  obliged 
to  attempt  to  show  by  a  dialectic  development  of  the  Eleatic 
principle  that  the  one  must  be  at  the  same  time  a  totality,  organ- 
ically connected,  and  .embracing  multiplicity  in  itself.  This 
double  relation  to  the  Eleatic  principle  is  carried  out  by  the 
Sophist  and  the  Parmenides ;  by  the  former  polemically  against  the 
Eleatic  doctrine,  in  that  it  proves  the  being  of  the  appearance  or 
the  not-being,  and  by  the  latter  pacifically,  in  that  it  analyzes  the 
Eleatic  one  by  its  own  logical  consequences  into  many.  The  inner 
progress  of  the  doctrine  of  Ideas  in  the  Megaric  group  of  dia- 
logues is  therefore  this,  viz.,  that  the  Theatcctus,  in  opposition  to 
the  Heraclitico-Protagorean  theory  of  the  absolute  becoming, 
affirms  the  objective  and  independent  reality  of  ideas,  and  the 
Sophist  shows  their  reciprocal  relation  and  combining  qualities, 
while  the  Parmenides  in  fine  exhibits  their  whole  dialectic  com- 
pleteness with  their  relation  to  the  phenomenal  world. 

The  Third  Period  begins  with  the  return  of  the  philosopher 


PLATO. 


81 


to  his  native  city.  It  unites  the  completeness  of  form  belonging 
to  the  first  with  the  profounder  characteristical  content  belonging 
to  the  second.  The  memories  of  his  youthful  years  seem  at  this 
time  to  have  risen  anew  before  the  soul  of  Plato,  and  to  have  im- 
parted again  to  his  literary  activity  the  long  lost  freshness  and 
fulness  of  that  period,  while  at  the  same  time  his  abode  in  foreign 
lands,  and  especially  his  acquaintance  with  the  Pythagorean  phi- 
losophy, had  greatly  enriched  his  mind  with  a  store  of  images  and 
ideals.  This  reviving  of  old  memories  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  the 
writings  of  this  group  return  with  fondness  to  the  personality  of 
Socrates,  and  represent  in  a  certain  degree  the  whole  philosophy 
of  Plato  as  the  exaltation  of  the  doctrine  and  the  ideal  embodi- 
ment of  the  historical  character  of  his  early  master.  In  opposi 
tion  to  both  of  the  first  two  periods,  the  third  is  marked  exter- 
nally by  an  excess  of  the  mythical  form  connected  with  the  grow- 
ing influence  of  Pythagoreanism  in  this  period,  and  internally  by 
the  application  of  the  doctrine  of  ideas  to  the  concrete  spheres 
of  psychology,  ethics  and  natural  science.  That  ideas  possess 
objective  reality,  and  are  the  foundation  of  all  essentiality  and 
truth,  while  the  phenomena  of  the  sensible  world  are  only  copies 
of  these,  was  a  theory  whose  vindication  was  no  longer  attempted, 
but  which  was  presupposed  as  already  proved,  and  as  forming  a 
dialectical  basis  for  the  pursuit  of  the  different  branches  of  science. 
With  this  was  connected  a  tendency  to  unite  the  hitherto  separate 
branches  of  science  into  a  systematic  whole,  as  well  as  to  mould 
together  the  previous  philosophical  directions,  and  show  the  inner 
application  of  the  Socratic  philosophy  for  ethics,  of  the  Eleatic 
for  dialectics,  and  the  Pythagorean  for  physics. 

Upon  this  stand-point,  the  Ph^cdrus,  Plato's  inaugural  to  his 
labors  in  the  Academy,  together  with  the  Symposium,  which  is 
.  closely  connected  with  it,  attempts  to  subject  the  rhetorical  theory 
and  practice  of  their  time  to  a  thorough  criticism,  in  order  to  show 
in  opposition  to  this  theory  and  practice,  that  the  fixedness  and 
stability  of  a  true  scientific  principle  could  only  be  attained  by 
grounding  every  thing  on  the  idea.  On  the  same  stand-point  the 
Pheedon  attempts  to  prove  the  immortality  of  the  soul  from  the 
4* 


82 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


doctrine  of  ideas ;  the  Philebus  to  bring  out  the  conception  ol 
pleasure  and  of  the  highest  good ;  the  Republic  to  develop  the 
essence  of  the  state,  and  the  Timasus  that  of  nature. 

Having  thus  sketched  the  inner  development  of  the  Platonic 
philosophy,  we  now  turn  to  a  systematic  statement  of  its  princi- 
ples. 

III. — Classification  of  the  Platonic  System. — The  phi- 
losophy of  Plato,  as  left  by  himself,  is  without  a  systematic  state- 
ment, and  has  no  comprehensive  principle  of  classification.  He 
has  given  us  only  the  history  of  his  thinking,  the  statement  of  his 
philosophical  development ;  we  are  therefore  limited  in  reference 
to  his  classification  of  philosophy  to  simple  intimations.  Accord- 
ingly, some  have  divided  the  Platonic  system  into  theoretical  and 
practical  science,  and  others  into  a  philosophy  of  the  good,  the 
beautiful  and  the  true.  Another  classification,  which  has  some 
support  in  old  records,  is  more  correct.  Some  of  the  ancients  say 
that  Plato  was  the  first  to  unite  in  one  whole  the  scattered  philo- 
sophical elements  of  the  earlier  sages,  and  so  to  obtain  for  philoso- 
phy the  three  parts,  logic,  physics,  and  ethics.  The  more  accurate 
statement  is  given  by  Sextus  Umpiricus,  that  Plato  has  laid  the 
foundation  for  this  threefold  division  of  philosophy,  but  that  it 
was  first  expressly  recognized  and  affirmed  by  his  scholars,  Xeno- 
crates  and  Aristotle.  The  Platonic  system  may,  however,  with- 
out difficulty,  be  divided  into  these  three  parts.  True,  there  are 
many  dialogues  which  mingle  together  in  difierent  proportions  the 
logical,  the  ethical,  and  the  physical  element,  and  though  even 
where  Plato  treats  of  some  special  discipline,  the  three  are  suf- 
fered constantly  to  interpenetrate  each  other,  still  there  are  some 
dialogues  in  which  this  fundamental  scheme  can  be  clearly  recog- 
nized. It  cannot  be  mistaken  that  the  Timseus  has  predominantly 
a  physical,  and  the  E-epublic  as  decidedly  an  ethical  element,  and 
if  the  dialectic  is  expressly  represented  in  no  separate  dialogue, 
yet  does  the  whole  Megaric  group  pursue  the  common  end  of 
bringing  out  the  conception  of  science  and  its  true  object,  being, 
and  is,  therefore,  in  its  content  decidedly  dialectical.  Plato  must 
have  been  led  to  this  threefold  division  by  even  the  earlier  de- 


PLATO. 


83 


velopment  of  philosophy,  and  though  Xenocrates  does  not  clearly 
see  it,  yet  since  Aristotle  presupposes  it  as  universally  admitted, 
we  need  not  scruple  to  make  it  the  basis  on  which  to  represent 
he  Platonic  system. 

The  order  which  these  different  parts  should  take,  Plato  him- 
self has  not  declared.  Manifestly,  however,  dialectics  should 
have  the  first  place  as  the  ground  of  all  philosophy,  since  Plato 
uniformly  directs  that  every  philosophical  investigation  should 
begin  with  accurately  determining  the  idea  (Phced.  p.  99.  Phcedr. 
p.  237),  while  he  subsequently  examines  all  the  concrete  spheres 
of  science  on  the  stand-point  of  the  doctrine  of  ideas.  The 
relative  position  of  the  other  two  parts  is  not  so  clear.  Since, 
however,  the  physics  culminates  in  the  ethics,  and  the  ethics, 
on  the  other  hand,  has  for  its  basis  physical  investigations  into 
the  ensouling  power  in  nature,  we  may  assign  to  physics  the 
former  place  of  the  two. 

The  mathematical  sciences  Plato  has  expressly  excluded  from 
philosophy.  He  considers  them  as  helps  to  philosophical  think- 
ing {Bep.  VIL  526),  as  necessary  steps  of  knowledge,  with- 
out which  no  one  can  come  to  philosophy  (lb.  VI.  510) ;  but 
mathematics  with  him  is  not  philosophy,  for  it  assumes  its  prin- 
ciples or  axioms,  without  at  all  accounting  for  them,  as  though 
they  were  manifest  to  all,  a  procedure  which  is  not  permitted  to 
pure  science ;  it  also  serves  itself  for  its  demonstrations,  with  il- 
lustrative figures,  although  it  does  not  treat  of  these,  but  of  that 
which  they  represent  to  the  understanding  (lb.).  Plato  thus 
places  mathematics  midway  between  a  correct  opinion  and  sci- 
ence, clearer  than  the  one,  but  more  obscure  than  the  other.  {lb. 
VII.  533.) 

IV.  The  Platonic  Dialectics.  1.  Conception  of  Dialec- 
tics.— The  conception  of  dialectics  or  of  logic,  is  used  by  the 
ancients  for  the  most  part  in  a  very  wide  sense,  while  Plato  em- 
ploys it  in  repeated  instances  interchangeably  with  philosophy, 
though  on  the  other  hand  he  treats  it  also  as  a  separate  branch 
of  philosophy.  He  divides  it  from  physics  as  the  science  of  the 
eternal  and  unchangeable  from  the  science  of  the  changeable, 


84 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


which  never  is,  but  is  only  ever  becoming ;  lie  distinguishes  also 
between  it  and  ethics,  so  far  as  the  latter  treats  of  the  good  not 
absolutely,  but  in  its  concrete  exhibition  in  morals  and  in  the 
state ;  so  that  dialectics  may  be  termed  philosophy  in  a  higher 
sense,  while  physics  and  ethics  follow  it  as  two  less  exact  sciences, 
or  as  a  not  yet  perfected  philosophy.  Plato  himself  defines  dia- 
lectics, according  to  the  ordinary  signification  of  the  word,  as  the 
art  of  developing  knowledge  by  way  of  dialogue  in  questions  and 
answers.  (Rep.  VII.  534).  But  since  the  art  of  communicating 
correctly  in  dialogue  is  according  to  Plato,  at  the  same  time  the 
art  of  thinking  correctly,  and  as  thus  thinking  and  speaking 
could  not  be  separated  by  the  ancients,  but  every  process  of 
thought  was  a  living  dialogue,  so  Plato  would  more  accurately 
define  dialectics  as  the  science  which  brings  speech  to  a  correct 
issue,  and  which  combines  or  separates  the  species,  i.  e.  the  con- 
ceptions of  things  correctly  with  one  another.  [Soph.  p.  253. 
Phcedr.  p.  266).  Dialectics  with  him  has  two  divisions,  to  know 
what  can  and  what  cannot  be  connected,  and  to  know  how  divi- 
sion or  combination  can  be.  But  as  with  Plato  these  conceptions 
of  species  or  ideas  are  the  only  actual  and  true  existence,  so  have 
we,  in  entire  conformity  with  this,  a  third  definition  of  dialectics 
(Pliilehus  p.  57),  as  the  science  of  being,  the  science  of  that 
which  is  true  and  unchangeable,  the  science  of  all  other  sciences. 
We  may  therefore  briefly  characterize  it  as  the  science  of  absolute 
being  or  of  ideas. 

2.  "What  is  Science?  (1.)  As  opposed  to  sensation  and  the 
sensuous  representation. — The  Theatastus  is  devoted  to  the  dis- 
cussion of  this  question  in  opposition  to  the  Protagorean  sensual- 
ism. That  all  knowledge  consists  in  perception,  and  that  the 
two  are  one  and  the  same  thing,  was  the  Protagorean  proposition, 
ifrom  this  it  followed,  as  Protagoras  himself  had  inferred,  that 
•■hings  are,  as  they  appear  to  me,  that  the  perception  or  sensation 
*B  infallible.  But  since  perception  and  sensation  are  infinitely 
diversified  with  different  individuals,  and  even  greatly  vary  in 
the  same  individual,  it  follows  farther,  that  there  are  no  objective 
determinations  and  predicates,  that  we  can  never  affirm  what  a 


PLATO. 


85 


thing  is  in  itself,  tliat  all  conceptions,  great,  small,  light,  heavy, 
to  increase,  to  diminish,  &g.,  have  only  a  relative  significance, 
and  consequently,  also,  the  conceptions  of  species,  as  combinations 
of  the  changeful  many,  are  wholly  wanting  in  constancy  and  sta- 
bility. In  opposition  to  this  Protagorean  thesis,  Plato  urges  the 
following  objections  and  contradictions.  First.  The  Protago- 
rean doctrine  leads  to  the  most  startling  consequences.  If  being 
and  appearance,  knowledge  and  perception  are  one  and  the  same 
thing,  then  is  the  irrational  brute,  which  is  capaole  of  perception, 
as  fully  entitled  to  be  called  the  measure  of  all  things,  as  man, 
and  if  the  representation  is  infallible,  as  the  expression  of  my 
subjective  character  at  a  given  time,  then  need  there  be  no  more 
instruction,  no  more  scientific  conclusion,  no  more  strife,  and  no 
more  refutation.  Second.  The  Protagorean  doctrine  is  a  logical 
contradiction ;  for  according  to  it  Protagoras  must  yield  the 
question  to  every  one  who  disputes  with  him,  since,  as  he  himself 
afiirms,  no  one  is  incorrect,  but  every  one  judges  only  according 
to  truth ;  the  pretended  truth  of  Protagoras  is  therefore  true  for 
no  man,  not  even  for  himself.  Third.  Protagoras  destroys  the 
knowledge  of  future  events.  That  which  I  may  regard  as  profit- 
able may  not  therefore  certainly  prove  itself  as  such  in  the  result. 
To  determine  that  which  is  really  profitable  implies  a  calculation 
of  the  future,  but  since  the  ability  of  men  to  form  such  a  calcu- 
lation is  very  diverse,  it  follows  from  this  that  not  man  as  such, 
but  only  the  wise  man  can  be  the  measure  of  things.  Fourth. 
The  theory  of  Protagoras  destroys  perception.  Perception,  ac- 
cording to  him,  rests  upon  a  distinction  of  the  perceived  object 
and  the  perceiving  subject,  and  is  the  common  product  of  the 
two.  But  in  his  view  the  objects  are  in  such  an  uninterrupted 
flow,  that  they  can  neither  become  fixed  in  seeing  nor  in  hearing. 
This  condition  of  constant  change  renders  all  knowledge  from 
sense,  and  hence  (the  identity  of  the  two  being  assumed),  all 
knowledge  impossible.  Fifth.  Protagoras  overlooks  the  apriori 
element  in  knowledge.  It  is  seen  in  an  analysis  of  the  sense- 
perception  itself,  that  all  knowledge  cannot  be  traced  to  the 
activity  of  the  senses,  but  that  there  must  also  be  presupposed 


86 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY, 


besides  these,  intellectual  functions,  and  hence  an  hidependent 
province  of  supersensible  knowledge,  v  We  see  with  the  eyes,  and 
hear  with  the  ears,  but  to  group  together  the  perceptions  attained 
through  these  different  organs,  and  to  hold  them  fast  in  the  unity 
of  self- consciousness,  is  beyond  the  power  of  the  activity  of  the 
senses.  Again,  we  compare  the  different  sense-perceptions  with 
one  another,  a  function  which  cannot  belong  to  the  senses,  since 
each  sense  can  only  furnish  its  own  distinctive  perception.  Still 
farther,  we  bring  forward  determinations  respecting  the  percep- 
tions which  we  manifestly  cannot  owe  to  the  senses,  in  that  we 
predicate  of  these  perceptions,  being  and  not-being,  likeness  and 
unlikeness,  &c.  These  determinations,  to  which  also  belong  the 
beautiful  and  the  odious,  good  and  evil,  constitute  a  peculiar  prov- 
ince of  knowledge,  which  the  soul,  independently  of  every  sense- 
perception,  brings  forward  through  its  own  independent  activity. 
The  ethical  element  of  this  Plato  exhibits  in  his  attack  upon 
sensualism,  and  also  in  other  dialogues.  He  maintains  (in  the 
Sophist),  that  men  holding  such  opinions  must  be  improved  be- 
fore they  can  be  instructed,  and  that  when  made  morally  better, 
they  will  readily  recognize  the  truth  of  the  soul  and  its  moral 
and  rational  capacities,  and  affirm  that  these  are  real  things, 
though  objects  of  neither  sight  nor  of  feeling. 

(2.)  The  Relation  of  Knowing  to  Opinion. — Opinion  is  just  as 
little  identical  with  knowing  as  is  the  sense-perception.  An  in- 
correct opinion  is  certainly  different  from  knowing,  and  a  correct 
one  is  not  the  same,  for  it  can  be  engendered  by  the  art  of  speech 
without  therefore  attaining  the  validity  of  true  knowledge.  The 
correct  opinion,  so  far  as  it  is  true  in  matter  though  imperfect  in 
form,  stands  rather  midway  between  knowing  and  not-knowing, 
and  participates  in  both. 

(3.)  The  Relation  of  Science  to  Thinking. — In  opposition  to 
the  Protagorean  sensualism,  we  have  already  referred  to  an  energy 
of  the  soul  independent  of  the  sensuous  perception  and  sensation, 
competent  in  itself  to  examine  the  universal,  and  grasp  true  being 
in  thought.  There  is,  therefore,  a  double  source  of  knowledge, 
sensation  and  rational  thinking.    Sensation  refers  to  that  which 


PLATO. 


87 


is  conceived  in  the  constant  becoming  and  perpetual  change,  to 
the  pure  momentary,  which  is  in  an  incessant  transition  from  the 
was,  through  the  now,  into  the  shall  be  (Farm.  p.  152) ;  it  is, 
therefore,  the  source  of  dim,  impure,  and  uncertain  knowledge; 
thinking  on  the  other  hand  refers  to  the  a,biding,  which  neither 
becomes  nor  departs,  but  remains  ever  the  same.  [Tim.  p.  51.) 
Existence,  says  the  Timasus  (p.  27)  is  of  two  kinds,  "  that  which 
ever  is  but  has  no  becoming,  and  that  which  ever  becomes  but 
never  is.  The  one  kind,  which  is  always  in  the  same  state,  is 
comprehended  through  reflection  by  the  reason,  the  other,  which 
becomes  and  departs,  but  never  properly  is,  may  be  apprehended 
by  the  sensuous  perception  without  the  reason."  True  science, 
therefore,  flows  alone  from  that  pure  and  thoroughly  internal  ac- 
tivity of  the  soul  which  is  free  from  all  corporeal  qualities  and 
every  sensuous  disturbance.  (Phced.  p.  65.)  In  this  state  the  soul 
looks  upon  things  purely  as  they  are  {Phced.  p.  66)  in  their  eter- 
nal being  and  their  unchangeable  condition.  Hence  the  true 
state  of  the  philosopher  is  announced  in  the  Phsedon  (p.  64)  to 
be  a  willingness  to  die,  a  longing  to  fly  from  the  body,  as  from  a 
hinderance  to  true  knowledge,  and  become  pure  spirit.  Accord- 
ing to  all  this,  science  is  the  thinking  of  true  being  or  of  ideas ; 
the  means  to  discover  and  to  know  these  ideas,  or  the  organ  for 
their  apprehension  is  the  dialectic,  as  the  art  of  separating  and  com- 
bining conceptions;  the  true  objects  of  dialectics  are  ideas. 

3.  The  Doctrine  of  Ideas  in  its  Genesis. — The  Platonic 
doctrine  of  ideas  is  the  common  product  of  the  Socratic  method 
of  formiDg  conceptions,  the  Heraclitic  doctrine  of  absolute  becom- 
ing, and  the  Eleatic  doctrine  of  absolute  being.  To  the  first  of 
these  Plato  owes  the  idea  of  a  knowing  through  conceptions,  to 
the  second  the  recognition  of  the  becoming  in  the  field  of  the 
sensuous,  to  the  third  the  position  of  a  field  of  absolute  reality. 
Elsewhere  {in  the  Philehus)  Plato  connects  the  doctrine  of  ideas 
with  the  Pythagorean  thought  that  every  thing  may  be  formed 
from  unity  and  multiplicity,  from  the  limit  and  the  unlimited. 
The  aim  of  the  Theataetus,  the  Sophist,  and  the  Parmenides  is  to 
refute  the  principles  of  the  Eleatics  and  Heraclitics ;  this  refuta- 


88 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


tion  is  effected  in  the  Theatsetus  by  combating  directly  the  prin- 
ciple of  an  absolute  becoming,  in  the  Sophist  by  combating 
directly  the  principle  of  abstract  being,  and  in  the  Parmenides  by 
taking  up  the  Eleatic  one  and  showing  its  true  relations.  We 
have  already  spoken  of  the  Theatostus ;  we  will  now  look  for  the 
development  of  the  doctrine  of  ideas  in  the  Sophist  and  Par- 
menides. 

The  ostensible  end  of  the  former  of  these  dialogues  is  to  show 
that  the  Sophist  is  really  but  a  caricature  of  the  philosopher,  but 
its  true  end  is  to  fix  the  reality  of  the  appearance,  i.  e.  of  the  not- 
being,  and  to  discuss  speculatively  the  relation  of  being  and  not- 
being.  The  doctrine  of  the  Eleatics  ended  with  the  rejection  of 
all  sensuous  knowledge,  declaring  that  what  we  receive  as  the 
perception  of  a  multiplicity  of  things  or  of  a  becoming  is  only  an 
appearance.  In  this  the  contradiction  was  clear,  the  not-being 
was  absolutely  denied,  and  yet  its  existence  was  admitted  in  the 
notion  of  men.  Plato  at  once  draws  attention  to  this  contradic- 
tion, showing  that  a  delusive  opinion,  which  gives  rise  to  a  false 
image  or  representation,  is  not  possible,  since  the  whole  theory 
rests  upon  the  assumption  that  the  false,  the  not -true,  i.  e.  not- 
being  cannot  even  be  thought.  This,  Plato  continues,  is  the  great 
difficulty  in  thinking  of  not-being,  that  both  he  who  denies  and 
he  who  affirms  its  reality  is  driven  to  contradict  himself  For 
though  it  is  inexpressible  and  inconceivable  either  as  one  or  as 
many,  still,  when  speaking  of  it,  we  must  attribute  to  it  both  being 
and  multiplicity.  If  we  admit  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a 
false  opinion,  we  assume  in  this  very  fact  the  notion  of  not-being, 
for  only  that  opinion  can  be  said  to  be  false  which  supposes  either 
the  not-being  to  be,  or  makes  that,  which  is  not,  to  be.  In  short, 
if  there  actually  exists  a  false  notion,  so  does  there  actually  and 
truly  exist  a  not-being.  After  Plato  had  thus  fixed  the  reality  of 
not-being,  he  discusses  the  relation  of  being  and  not-being,  i.  e. 
the  relation  of  conceptions  generally  in  their  combinations  and 
difierences.  If  not-being  has  no  less  reality  than  being,  and  being 
no  more  than  not-being,  if,  therefore,  e.  g.  the  not-great  is  as  truly 
real  as  the  great,  then  every  conception  may  be  apprehended  ac- 


PLATO. 


85 


cording  to  its  opposite  sides  as  being  and  not-being  at  the  same 
time :  it  is  a  being  in  reference  to  itself,  as  something  identical 
with  itself,  but  it  is  not-being  in  reference  to  every  one  of  the 
numberless  other  conceptions  which  can  be  referred  to  it,  and 
with  which,  on  account  of  its  difference  from  them,  it  can  have 
nothing  in  common.  The  conception  of  the  same  (ravTov)  and  the 
different  (^arepov)  represent  the  general  form  of  an  antithesis. 
These  are  the  universal  formulae  of  combination  for  all  concep- 
tions. This  reciprocal  relation  of  conceptions  as  at  the  same  time 
being  and  not-being,  by  virtue  of  which  they  can  be  arranged 
among  themselves,  forms  now  the  basis  for  the  art  of  dialectics, 
which  has  to  judge  what  conceptions  can  and  what  cannot  be 
joined  together.  Plato  illustrates  here  by  taking  the  conceptions 
of  being,  motion  (becoming),  and  rest  (existence),  and  showing 
what  are  the  results  of  the  combinations  of  these  ideas.  The 
conceptions  of  motion  and  rest  cannot  well  be  joined  together, 
though  both  of  them  may  be  joined  with  that  of  being,  since  both 
arc;  the  conception  of  rest  is  therefore  in  reference  to  itself  a 
being,  but  in  reference  to  the  conception  of  motion  a  not-being  or 
different.  Thus  the  Platonic  doctrine  of  ideas,  after  having  in 
the  Theataetus  attained  its  general  foundation  in  fixing  the  objec- 
tive reality  of  conceptions,  becomes  now  still  farther  developed  in 
the  Sophist  to  a  doctrine  of  the  agreement  and  disagreement  of 
conceptions.  The  category  which  conditions  these  reciprocal  re- 
lations is  that  of  not-being  or  difference.  This  fundamental 
thought  of  the  Sophist,  that  being  is  not  without  not-being  and 
not-being  is  not  without  being,  may  be  expressed  in  mo(fern  phra- 
seology thus :  negation  is  not  not-being  but  determinateness,  and 
on  the  other  hand  all  determinateness  and  concreteness  of  concep- 
tions, or  every  thing  affirmative  can  be  only  through  negation ; 
in  other  words  the  conception  of  contradiction  is  the  soul  of  a 
philosophical  method. 

The  doctrine  of  ideas  appears  in  the  Parmenides  as  the  positive 
consequence  and  progressive  development  of  the  Eleatic  princi- 
ple. Indeed  in  thia  dialogue,  in  that  Plato  makes  Parmenides  the 
chief  speaker,  he  seems  willing  to  allow  that  his  doctrine  is  in 


90 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


substance  that  of  the  Eleatic  sage.  True,  the  fundamental 
thought  of  the  dialogue — that  the  one  is  not  conceivable  in  its 
complete  singleness  without  the  many,  nor  the  many  without  the 
one,  that  each  necessarily  presupposes  and  reciprocally  conditions 
the  other — stands  in  the  most  direct  contradiction  to  Eleaticism. 
Yet  Parmenides  himself,  by  dividing  his  poem  into  two  parts,  and 
treating  in  the  first  of  the  one  and  in  the  second  of  the  many, 
postulates  an  inner  mediation  between  these  two  externally  so  dis- 
jointed parts  of  his  philosophy,  and  in  this  respect  the  Platonic 
theory  of  ideas  might  give  itself  out  as  the  farther  elimination, 
and  the  true  sense  of  the  Parmenidean  philosophizing.  This  dia- 
lectical mediation  between  the  one  and  the  not-one  or  the  many 
Plato  now  attempts  in  four  antinomies,  which  have  ostensibly  only 
a  negative  result  in  so  far  as  they  show  that  contradictions  arise 
both  whether  the  one  be  adopted  or  rejected.  The  positive  sense 
of  these  antinomies,  though  it  can  be  gained  only 'through  infer- 
ences which  Plato  himself  does  not  expressly  utter,  but  leaves  to 
be  drawn  by  the  reader — is  as  follows.  The  first  antinomy  shows 
that  the  one  is  inconceivable  as  such  since  it  is  only  apprehended 
in  its  abstract  opposition  to  the  many ;  the  second,  that  in  this 
case  also  the  reality  of  the  many  is  inconceivable  ;  the  third,  that 
the  one  or  the  idea  cannot  be  conceived  as  not-being,  since  there 
can  be  neither  conception  nor  predicate  of  the  absolute  not-being, 
and  since,  if  not-being  is  excluded  from  all  fellowship  with  being, 
all  becoming  and  departing,  all  similarity  and  difi"erence,  every 
representation  and  explanation  concerning  it  must  also  be  denied ; 
and  lastly,  the  fourth  afiirms  that  the  not-one  or  the  many  cannot 
be  conceived  without  the  one  or  the  idea.  What  now  is  Plato's 
aim  in  this  discussion  of  the  dialectic  relations  between  the  con- 
ceptions of  the  one  and  the  many  ?  "Would  he  use  the  conception 
of  the  one  only  as  an  example  to  explain  his  dialectic  method 
with  conceptions,  or  is  the  discussion  of  this  conception  itself  the 
very  object  before  him  ?  Manifestly  the  latter,  or  the  dialogue 
ends  without  result  and  without  any  inner  connection  of  its  two 
parts.  But  how  came  Plato  to  make  such  a  special  investigation 
of  this  conception  of  the  one  ?    If  we  bear  in  mind  that  the 


PLATO. 


91 


Eleatics  had  already  perceived  the  antithesis  of  the  actual  and 
the  phenomenal  world  in  the  antithesis  of  the  one  and  the  many, 
and  that  Plato  himself  had  also  regarded  his  ideas  as  the  unity 
of  the  manifold,  as  the  one  and  the  same  in  the  many — since  he 
repeatedly  uses  "  idea"  and  'Uhe  one"  in  the  same  sense,  and 
places  (Rep.  VII.  537)  dialectics  in  the  same  rank  with  the 
faculty  of  bringing  many  to  unity — then  is  it  clear  that  the  one 
which  is  made  an  object  of  investigation  in  the  Parmenides  is  the 
idea  in  its  general  sense,  i.  e.  in  its  logical  form,  and  that  Plato 
consequently  in  the  dialectic  of  the  one  and  the  many  would  repre- 
sent the  dialectic  of  the  idea  and  the  phenomenal  world,  or  in  other 
words  would  dialectically  determine  and  establish  the  correct  view 
of  the  idea  as  the  unity  in  the  manifoldness  of  the  phenomenal. 
In  that  it  is  shown  in  the  Parmenides,  on  the  one  side,  that  the 
many  cannot  be  conceived  without  the  one,  and  on  the  other  side, 
that  the  one  must  be  something  which  embraces  in  itself  mani- 
foldness, so  have  we  the  ready  inference  on  the  one  side,  that  the 
phenomenal  world,  or  the  many,  has  a  true  being  only  in  so  far 
as  it  has  the  one  or  the  conception  within  it,  and  on  the  other 
side,  that  since  the  conception  is  not  an  abstract  one  but  mani- 
foldness in  unity,  it  must  actually  have  manifoldness  in  unity  in 
order  to  be  able  to  be  in  the  phenomenal  world.  The  indirect 
result  of  the  Parmenides  is  that  matter  as  the  infinitely  divisible 
and  undetermined  mass  has  no  actuality,  but  is  in  relation  to  the 
ideal  world  a  not-being,  and  though  the  ideas  as  the  true  being 
gain  their  appearance  in  it,  yet  the  idea  itself  is  all  that  is  actual 
in  the  appearance  or  phenomenon ;  the  phenomenal  world  derives 
its  whole  existence  from  the  ideal  world  which  appears  in  it,  and 
has  a  being  only  so  far  as  it  has  a  conception  or  idea  for  its  con- 
tent. 

4.  Positive  Exposition  of  the  Docteine  of  Ideas. — Ideas 
may  be  defined  according  to  the  diff'erent  sides  of  their  historical 
connection,  as  the  common  in  the  manifold,  the  universal  in  the 
particular,  the  one  in  the  many,  or  the  constant  and  abiding  in  the 
changing.  Subjectively  they  are  principles  of  knowing  which 
c  ^ot  be  derived  from  experience  they  are  the  intuitively  cer- 


92 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


tain  and  innate  regulators  of  our  knowledge.  Objectively  they 
are  the  immutable  principles  of  being  and  of  the  phenomenal 
world,  incorporeal  and  simple  unities  which  have  no  relation  to 
space,  and  which  may  be  predicated  of  every  independent  thing. 
The  doctrine  of  ideas  grew  originally  out  of  the  desire  to  give  a 
definite  conception  to  the  inner  essence  of  things,  and  make  the 
real  world  conceivable  as  a  harmoniously  connected  intellectual 
world.  This  desire  of  scientific  knowledge  Aristotle  cites  ex- 
pressly as  the  motive  to  the  Platonic  doctrine  of  ideas.  "  Plato," 
he  says  {MetapJi.  XIII.  4),  "  came  to  the  doctrine  of  ideas  be- 
cause he  was  convinced  of  the  truth  of  the  Heraclitic  view  which 
regarded  the  sensible  world  as  a  ceaseless  flowing  and  changing. 
His  conclusion  from  this  was,  that  if  there  be  a  science  of  any 
thing  there  must  be,  besides  the  sensible,  other  substances  which 
have  a  permanence,  for  there  can  be  no  science  of  the  fleeting." 
It  is,  therefore,  the  idea  of  science  which  demands  the  reality  of 
ideas,  a  demand  which  cannot  be  granted  unless  an  idea  or  con- 
ception is  also  the  ground  of  all  being.  This  is  the  case  with 
Plato.  According  to  him  there  can  be  neither  a  true  knowing 
nor  a  true  being  without  ideas  and  conceptions  which  have  an 
independent  reality. 

What  now  does  Plato  mean  by  idea  ?  From  what  has  already 
been  said  it  is  clear  that  he  means  something  more  than  ideal  con- 
ceptions of  the  beautiful  and  the  good.  An  idea  is  found,  as  the 
name  itself  (et^o?)  indicates,  wherever  a  universal  conception  of  a 
species  or  kind  is  found.  Hence  Plato  speaks  of  the  idea  of  a 
bed,  table,  strength,  health,  voice,  color,  ideas  of  simple  relations 
and  properties,  ideas  of  mathematical  figures,  and  even  ideas  of 
not-being,  and  of  that,  which  in  its  essence  only  contradicts  the 
idea,  baseness  and  vice.  In  a  word,  we  may  put  an  idea  wherever 
many  things  may  be  characterized  by  a  common  name  {Bep.  X. 
596) :  or  as  Aristotle  expresses  it  (Met.  XII.  3).  Plato  places 
an  idea  to  every  class  of  being.  In  this  sense  Plato  himself 
speaks  in  the  beginning  of  the  Parmenides.  Parmenides  asks  the 
young  Socrates  what  he  calls  ideas.  Socrates  answers  by  naming 
unconditionally  the  moral  ideas,  the  ideas  of  the  true,  the  beauti- 


PLATO. 


93 


fill,  the  good,  and  then  after  a  little  delay  he  mentions  some  physi- 
cal ones,  as  the  ideas  of  man,  of  fire,  of  water ;  he  will  not  allow 
ideas  to  be  predicated  of  that  which  is  only  a  formless  mass,  or 
which  is  a  part  of  something  else,  as  hair,  mud  and  clay,  hut  in 
this  he  is  answered  by  Parmenides,  that  if  he  would  be  fully  im- 
bued with  philosophy,  he  must  not  consider  such  things  as  these 
to  be  wholly  despicable,  but  should  look  upon  them  as  truly 
though  remotely  participating  in  the  idea.  Here  at  least  the 
claim  is  asserted  that  no  province  of  being  is  excluded  from  the 
idea,  that  even  that  which  appears  most  accidental  and  irrational 
is  yet  a  part  of  rational  knowledge,  in  fact  that  every  thing  ex- 
isting may  be  brought  within  a  rational  conception. 

5.  The  relation  of  Ideas  to  the  Phenomenal  World. 
Analogous  to  the  different  definitions  of  idea  are  the  different 
names  which  Plato  gives  to  the  sensible  and  phenomenal  world. 
He  calls  it  the  many,  the  divisible,  the  unbounded,  the  undeter- 
mined and  measureless,  the  becoming,  the  relative,  great  and  small, 
not-being.  The  relation  now  in  which  these  two  worlds  of  sense 
and  of  ideas  stand  to  each  other  is  a  question  which  Plato  has 
answered  neither  fully  nor  consistently  with  himself.  His  most 
common  way  is  to  characterize  the  relation  of  things  to  concep- 
tions as  a  participant,  or  to  call  things  the  copies  and  adumbra- 
tions, while  ideas  are  the  archetypes.  Yet  this  is  so  indefinite 
that  Aristotle  properly  says  that  to  talk  in  this  way  is  only  to 
use  poetical  metaphors.  The  great  difficulty  of  the  docti'ine  of 
ideas  is  not  solved  but  only  increased  by  these  figurative  repre- 
sentations. The  difficulty  lies  in  tlie  contradiction  which  grows 
out  of  the  fact  that  while  Plato  admits  the  reality  of  the  becom- 
ing and  of  the  province  of  the  becoming,  he  still  affirms  that  ideas 
which  are  substances  ever  at  rest  and  ever  the  same  are  the  only 
actual.  Now  in  this  Plato  is  formally  consistent  with  himself, 
while  he  characterizes  the  materiel  of  matter  not  as  a  positive 
substratum  but  as  not-being,  and  guards  himself  with  the  express 
affirmation  that  he  does  not  consider  the  sensible  as  being,  but 
only  as  something  similar  to  being.  (Rep.  X.  597.)  The  position 
laid  down  in  the  Parmenides  is  also  consistent  with  this,  that  a 


94 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


perfect  philosopliy  should  look  upon  the  idea  as  the  cognizable  in 
the  phenomenal  world,  and  should  follow  it  out  in  the  smallest 
particulars  until  every  part  of  being  should  be  known  and  all 
dualism  removed.    In  fine,  Plato  in  many  of  his  expressions 
seems  to  regard  the  world  of  sensation  only  as  a  subjective  ap- 
pearance, as  a  product  of  the  subjective  notion,  as  the  result  of  a 
confused  way  of  representing  ideas.    In  this  sense  the  phenomena 
are  entirely  dependent  on  ideas ;  they  are  nothing  but  the  ideas 
themselves  in  the  form  of  not  being  ;  the  phenomenal  world  de- 
rives its  whole  existence  from  the  ideal  world  which  appears  in  it. 
But  yet  when  Plato  calls  the  sensible  a  mingling  of  the  same 
with  the  different  or  the  not-being  {Tim.  p.  35),  when  he  charac- 
terizes the  ideas  as  vowels  which  go  through  every  thing  like  a 
chain  [Soph.  p.  253),  when  he  himself  conceives  the  possibility 
that  matter  might  ofi"er  opposition  to  the  formative  energy  of 
ideas  {Tim.  p.  66),  when  he  speaks  of  an  evil  soul  of  the  world 
{de  Leg.  X.  896),  and  gives  intimations  of  the  presence  in  the 
world  of  a  principle  in  nature  hostile  to  God  [Polit.  p.  268), 
when  he  in  the  Phsedon  treats  of  the  relation  between  body  and 
soul  as  one  wholly  discordant  and  malignant, — in  all  this  there 
is  evidence  enough,  even  after  allowing  for  the  mythical  form  of 
the  Timaeus,  and  the  rhetorical  composition  which  prevails  in  the 
Phgedon,  to   substantiate  the   contradiction  mentioned  above. 
This  is  most  clear  in  the  Timasus.    Plato  in  this  dialogue  makes 
the  sensible  world  to  be  formed  by  a  Creator  after  the  pattern  of 
an  idea,  but  in  this  he  lays  down  as  a  condition  that  this  Demi- 
urge or  Creator  should  find  at  hand  a  something  which  should  be 
apt  to  receive  and  exhibit  this  ideal  image.    This  something 
Plato  compares  to  the  matter  which  is  fashioned  by  the  artisan 
(whence  the  later  name  hyle).    He  characterizes  it  as  wholly  un- 
determined and  formless,  but  possessing  in  itself  an  aptitude  for 
every  variety  of  forms,  an  invisible  and  shapeless  thing,  a  some- 
thing which  it  is  dijfficult  to  characterize,  and  which  Plato  even 
does  not  seem  inclined  very  closely  to  describe.    In  this  the 
actuality  of  matter  is  denied ;  while  Plato  makes  it  equivalent  to 
space  it  is  only  the  place,  the  negative  condition  of  the  sensible  j 


PLATO, 


95 


while  it  possesses  a  being  only  as  it  receives  in  itself  the  ideal 
form.  Still  matter  remains  the  objective  and  phenomenal  form 
of  the  idea :  the  visible  world  arises  only  through  the  mingling 
of  ideas  with  this  substratum,  and  if  matter  be  metaphysically 
expressed  as  "  the  different,"  then  does  it  follow  with  logical  ne- 
cessity in  a  dialectical  discussion  that  it  is  just  as  truly  being  as 
not-being.  Plato  does  not  conceal  from  himself  this  difficulty, 
and  therefore  attempts  to  represent  with  comparisons  and  images 
this  presupposition  of  a  hyle  which  he  finds  it  as  impossible  to  do 
without  as  to  express  in  a  conceivable  form.  If  he  would  do 
without  it  he  must  rise  to  the  conception  of  an  absolute  creation, 
or  consider  matter  as  an  ultimate  emanation  from  the  absolute 
spirit,  or  else  explain  it  as  appearance  only.  Thus  the  Platonic 
system  is  only  a  fruitless  struggle  against  dualism. 

6.  The  idea  of  the  Good  and  the  Deity.  If  the  true  and 
the  real  is  exhibited  in  general  conceptions  which  are  so  related 
to  each  other  that  every  higher  conception  embraces  and  combines 
under  it  several  lower,  so  that  any  one  starting  from  a  single  idea 
may  eventually  discover  all  {Meno.  p.  81), -then  must  the  sum  of 
ideas  form  a  connected  organism  and  succession  in  which  the 
lower  idea  appears  as  a  stepping-stone  and  presupposition  to  a 
higher.  This  succession  must  have  its  end  in  an  idea  which  needs 
no  higher  idea  or  presupposition  to  sustain  it.  This  highest  idea, 
the  ultimate  limit  of  all  knowledge,  and  itself  the  independent 
ground  of  all  other  ideas,  Plato  calls  the  idea  of  the  good,  i.  e. 
not  of  the  moral  but  of  the  metaphysical  good.  (Bep.  YII.  517.) 

What  this  good  is  in  itself,  Plato  undertakes  to  show  only  in 
images.  "  In  the  same  manner  as  the  sun,"  he  says  in  the  Repub- 
lic (VI.  506),  "  is  the  cause  of  sight,  and  the  cause  not  merely  that 
objects  are  visible  but  also  that  they  grow  and  are  produced,  so 
the  good  is  of  such  power  and  beauty,  that  it  is  not  merely  the 
cause  of  science  to  the  soul,  but  is  also  the  cause  of  being  and 
reality  to  whatever  is  the  object  of  science,  and  as  the  sun  is  not 
itself  sight  or  the  object  of  sight  but  presides  over  both,  so  the 
good  is  not  science  and  truth  but  is  superior  to  both,  they  being 
not  the  good  itself  but  of  a  goodly  nature."    The  good  has  uncon- 


96 


A  inSTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


ditioned  wortli,  and  gives  to  every  other  thing  all  the  value  it 
possesses.  The  idea  of  the  good  excludes  all  presupposition.  It 
is  the  ultimate  ground  at  the  same  time  of  knowing  and  of  being, 
of  the  perceiver  and  the  perceived,  of  the  subjective  and  the  ob- 
jective, of  the  ideal  and  the  real,  though  exalted  itself  above  such 
a  division.  [Rep.  YI.  508-517.)  Plato,  however,  has  not  attempt- 
ed a  derivation  of  the  remaining  ideas  from  the  idea  of  the  good ; 
his  course  here  is  wholly  an  empirical  one ;  a  certain  class  of 
objects  are  taken,  and  having  referred  these  to  their  common 
essence  this  is  given  out  as  their  idea.  He  has  treated  the  indi- 
vidual conceptions  so  independently,  and  has  made  each  one  so 
complete  in  itself,  that  it  is  impossible  to  find  a  proper  division  or 
establish  an  immanent  continuation  of  one  into  another. 

It  is  difficult  to  say  precisely  what  relation  this  idea  of  the 
good  bore  to  the  Deity  in  the  Platonic  view.  Taking  every  thing 
together  it  seems  clear  that  Plato  regarded  the  two  as  identical, 
but  whether  he  conceived  this  highest  cause  to  be  a  personal  being 
or  not  is  a  question  which  hardly  admits  of  a  definite  answer. 
The  logical  result  of  his  system  would  exclude  the  personality  of 
Grod.  If  only  the  universal  (the  idea)  is  the  true  being,  then  can 
the  only  absolute  idea,  the  Deity,  be  only  the  absolute  universal ; 
but  that  Plato  was  himself  conscious  of  this  logical  conclusion  we 
can  hardly  affirm,  any  more  than  we  can  say  on  the  other  hand  that 
he  was  clearly  a  theist.  For  whenever  in  a  mythical  or  popular 
statement  he  speaks  of  innumerable  gods,  this  only  indicates  that 
he  is  speaking  in  the  language  of  the  popular  religion,  and  when 
he  speaks  in  an  accurate  philosophical  sense,  he  only  makes  the 
relation  of  the  personal  deity  with  the  idea  a  very  uncertain  one. 
Most  probable,  therefore,  is  it  that  this  whole  question  concerning 
the  personality  of  Grod  was  not  yet  definitely  before  him,  that  he 
took  up  the  religious  idea  of  Grod  and  defended  it  in  ethical 
interest  against  the  anthropomorphism  of  the  mythic  poets,  that 
be  sought  to  establish  it  by  arguments  drawn  from  the  evidences 
of  design  in  nature,  and  the  universal  prevalence  of  a  belief  in  a 
God,  while  as  a  philosopher  he  made  no  use  of  it. 

V.  The  Platonic  Physics.     1.  Nature. — The  connection 


PLATO. 


97 


^etween  the  Physics  and  the  Dialectics  of  Plato  lies  principally 
m  two  points — the  conception  of  becoming,  which  forms  the  chief 
property  of  nature,  and  that  of  real  being,  which  is  at  once  the  all 
sufficient  and  good,  and  the  true  end  of  all  becoming.  Because 
nature  belongs  to  the  province  of  irrational  sensation  we  cannot 
look  for  the  same  accuracy  in  the  treatment  of  it,  as  is  furnished 
in  dialectics.  Plato  therefore  applied  himself  with  much  less  zest 
to  physical  investigations  than  to  those  of  an  ethical  or  dialectical 
character,  and  indeed  only  attended  to  them  in  his  later  years. 
Only  in  one  dialogue,  the  Timaeus,  do  we  find  any  extended  evo- 
lution of  physical  doctrines,  and  even  here  Plato  seems  to  have 
gone  to  his  work  with  much  less  independence  than  his  wont,  this 
dialogue  being  more  strongly  tinctured  with  Pythagoreanism  than 
any  other  of  his  writings.  The  difficulty  of  the  Timaeus  is  in- 
creased by  the  mythical  form  on  which  the  old  commentators 
themselves  have  stumbled.  If  we  take  the  first  impression  that 
it  gives  us,  we  have,  before  the  creation  of  the  world,  a  Creator  as 
a  moving  and  a  reflecting  principle,  with  on  the  one  side  the  ideal 
world  existing  immovable  as  the  eternal  archetype,  and  on  the 
other  side,  a  chaotic,  formless,  irregular,  fluctuating  mass,  which 
holds  in  itself  the  germ  of  the  material  world,  but  has  no  deter- 
mined character  nor  substance.  With  these  two  elements  the 
Creator  now  blends  the  world-soul  which  he  distributes  according 
to  the  relation  of  numbers,  and  sets  it  in  definite  and  harmonious 
motion.  In  this  way  the  material  world,  which  has  become  actual 
through  the  arrangement  of  the  chaotic  mass  into  the  four  ele- 
ments, finds  its  external  frame,  and  the  process  thus  begun  is 
completed  in  its  external  structure  by  the  formation  of  the  organic 
world. 

It  is  difficult  to  separate  the  mythical  and  the  philosophical 
elements  in  this  cosmogony  of  the  Timaeus,  especially  difficult  to 
determine  how  far  the  historical  construction,  which  gives  a  suc- 
cession in  time  to  the  acts  of  creation,  is  only  a  formal  one,  and 
also  how  far  the  affirmation  that  matter  is  absolutely  a  not-being 
can  be  harmonized  with  the  general  tenor  of  Plato's  statements. 
The  significance  of  the  world-soul  is  clearer.  Since  the  soul  in 
5 


98 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


the  Platonic  system  is  the  mean  between  spirit  and  body,  and  as 
in  the  same  way  mathematical  relations,  in  their  most  universal 
expression  as  numbers,  are  the  mean  between  mere  sensuous  ex- 
istence and  the  pure  idea  (between  the  one  and  the  many  as  Plato 
expresses  it),  it  would  seem  clear  that  the  world-soul,  construed 
according  to  the  relation  of  numbers,  must  express  the  relation  of 
the  world  of  ideas  to  that  of  sense,  in  other  words,  that  it  denotes 
the  sensible  world  as  a  thought  represented  in  the  form  of  material 
existence.  The  Platonic  view  of  nature,  in  opposition  to  the 
mechanical  attempts  to  explain  it  of  the  earlier  philosophers,  is 
entirely  teleological,  and  based  upon  the  conception  of  the  good, 
or,  on  the  moral  idea.  Plato  conceives  the  world  as  the  image  of 
the  good,  as  the  work  of  the  divine  munificence.  As  it  is  the 
image  of  the  perfect  it  is  therefore  only  one,  corresponding  to  the 
idea  of  the  single  all-embracing  substance,  for  an  infinite  number 
of  worlds  is  not  to  be  conceived  as  actual.  For  the  same  reason 
the  world  is  spherical,  after  the  most  perfect  and  uniform  struc- 
ture, which  embraces  in  itself  all  other  forms ;  its  movement  is  in 
a  circle,  because  this,  by  returning  into  itself,  is  most  like  the 
movement  of  reason.  The  particular  points  of  the  Timaeus,  the 
derivation  of  the  four  elements,  the  separation  of  the  seven  planets 
according  to  the  musical  scale,  the  opinion  that  the  stars  were  im- 
mortal and  heavenly  substances,  the  affirmation  that  the  earth 
holds  an  abiding  position  in  the  middle  of  the  world,  a  view  which 
subsequently  became  elaborated  to  the  Ptolemaic  system,  the  re- 
ference of  all  material  figures  to  the  triangle  as  the  simplest  plane 
figure,  the  division  of  inanimate  nature,  according  to  the  four  ele- 
ments, into  creatures  of  earth,  water,  and  air,  his  discussions  re- 
specting organic  nature,  and  especially  respecting  the  construction 
of  the  human  body — all  these  we  need  here  only  mention.  Their 
philosophical  worth  consists  not  so  much  in  their  material  content, 
but  rather  in  their  fundamental  idea,  that  the  world  should  be 
conceived  as  the  image  and  the  work  of  reason,  as  an  organism 
of  order,  harmony,  and  beauty,  as  the  good  actualizing  itself 

2.  The  Soul. — The  doctrine  of  the  soul,  considering  it  simply 
as  the  basis  of  a  moral  action,  and  leaving  out  of  view  all  ques- 


PLATO. 


99 


tions  of  concrete  ethics,  forms  a  constituent  element  in  the  Pla- 
tonic physics.  Since  the  soul  is  united  to  the  body,  it  participates 
in  the  motions  and  changes  of  the  body,  and  is,  in  this  respect, 
related  to  the  perishable.  But  in  so  far  as  it  participates  in  the 
knowledge  of  the  eternal,  i.  e.  in  so  far  as  it  knows  ideas,  does 
there  live  within  it  a  divine  principle — reason.  Accordingly, 
Plato  distinguishes  two  components  of  the  soul — the  divine  and  the 
mortal,  the  rational  and  the  irrational.  These  two  are  united  by 
an  intermediate  link,  which  Plato  calls  -^v/xos  or  spirit,  and  which, 
though  allied  to  reason  is  not  reason  itself,  since  it  is  often  exhibi- 
ted in  children  and  also  in  brutes,  and  since  even  men  are  often  car- 
ried away  by  it  without  reflection.  This  threefol  dness,  here  exhibited 
psychologically,  is  found,  in  different  applications,  through  all  the 
last  general  period  of  Plato's  literary  life.  Based  upon  the  anthro- 
pological triplicate  of  reason,  soul  and  body,  it  corresponds  also  to 
the  division  of  theoretical  knowledge  into  science  (or  thinking), 
correct  opinions  (or  sense-perception),  and  ignorance,  to  the  triple 
ladder  of  eroticism  in  the  Symposium  and  the  mythological  repre- 
sentation connected  with  this  of  Poros,  Eros,  and  Penia ;  to  the 
metaphysical  triplicate  of  the  ideal  world,  mathematical  relations 
and  the  sensible  world ;  and  furnishes  ground  for  deriving  the 
ethical  division  of  virtue  and  the  political  division  of  ranks. 

So  far  as  the  soul  is  a  mean  between  the  spiritual  and  cor- 
poreal, may  we  connect  the  Phaedon's  proofs  of  its  immortality 
with  the  psychological  view  now  before  us.  The  common  thought 
of  these  arguments  is  that  the  soul,  in  its  capacity  for  thinking, 
participates  in  the  reason,  and  being  thus  of  an  opposite  nature  to, 
and  uncontrolled  by  the  corporeal,  it  may  have  an  independent 
existence.  The  arguments  are  wholly  analytical,  and  possess  no 
valid  and  universal  proof ;  they  proceed  entirely  upon  a  petitio 
princijoii,  they  are  derived  partly  from  mythical  philosophemes, 
and  manifest  not  only  an  obscure  conception  of  the  soul,  but  of  its 
relations  to  the  body  and  the  reason,  and,  so  far  as  the  relation  of 
the  soul  to  the  ideal  world  is  in  view,  they  furnish  in  the  best  case 
only  some  proof  for  the  immortality  of  him  who  has  raised  his 
soul  to  a  pure  spirit,  i.  e.  the  immortality  of  the  philosopher.  Plato 


100 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


was  not  himself  deceived  as  to  the  theoretical  insufficiency  of  his 
arguments.  Their  number  would  show  this,  and,  besides,  he  ex- 
pressly calls  them  proofs  which  amount  to  only  human  probability, 
and  furnish  practical  postulates  alone.  With  this  view  he  intro- 
duces at  the  close  of  his  arguments  the  myth  of  the  lower  world, 
and  the  state  of  departed  souls,  in  order,  by  complying  with  the 
religious  notions,  and  traditions  of  his  countrymen,  to  gain  a  pos- 
itive support  for  belief  in  the  soul's  immortality.  Elsewhere 
Plato  also  speaks  of  the  lower  world,  and  of  the  future  rewards 
and  punishments  of  the  good  and  the  evil,  in  accordance  with  the 
popular  notions,  as  though  he  saw  the  elements  of  a  divine  revela- 
tion therein ;  he  tells  of  purifying  punishment  in  Hades,  analo- 
gous to  a  purgatory ;  he  avails  himself  of  the  common  notion  to 
affirm  that  shades  still  subject  to  the  corporeal  principle  will 
hover  after  death  over  their  graves,  seeking  to  recover  their  life- 
less bodies,  and  at  times  he  dilates  upon  the  migration  of  the  soul 
to  various  human  and  brute  forms.  On  the  whole,  we  find  in 
Plato's  proofs  of  immortality,  as  in  his  psychology  generally,  that 
dualism,  which  here  expresses  itself  as  hatred  to  the  corporeal, 
and  is  connected  with  the  tendency  to  seek  the  ultimate  ground 
of  evil  in  the  nature  of  the  "  different"  and  the  sensible  world. 

VI.  The  Platonic  Ethics. — The  ground  idea  of  the  good, 
which  in  physics  served  only  as  an  inventive  conception,  finds 
now,  in  the  ethics,  its  true  exhibition.  Plato  has  developed  it 
prominently  according  to  three  sides,  as  good,  as  individual  virtue, 
and  as  ethical  world  in  the  state.  The  conception  of  duty  re- 
mains in  the  background  with  him  as  with  the  older  philosophers. 

1.  Good  and  Pleasure. — That  the  highest  good  can  be  noth- 
ing other  than  the  idea  of  the  good  itself,  has  already  been  shown 
in  the  dialectics,  where  this  idea  was  suffered  to  appear  as  the  ulti- 
mate end  of  all  our  striving.  But  since  the  dialectics  represent 
the  supreme  good  as  unattainable  by  human  reason,  and  only  cog 
nizable  in  its  different  modes  of  manifestation,  we  can,  therefore 
only  follow  these  different  manifestations  of  the  highest  gooa, 
which  represent  not  the  good  itself,  but  the  good  in  becoming, 
where  it  appears  as  science,  truth,  beauty,  virtue,  &c.    We  are 


PLATO. 


101 


thus  not  required  to  be  equal  to  God,  but  only  like  him  (ThecEi.) 
It  is  this  point  of  view  which  lies  at  the  basis  of  the  graduated 
table  of  good,  given  in  the  Philebus. 

In  seeking  the  highest  good,  the  conception  of  pleasure  must 
be  investigated.  The  Platonic  stand-point  here  is  the  attempt  to 
strike  a  balance  between  Hedonism,  (the  Cyrenian  theory  that 
pleasure  is  the  highest  good,  cf.  ^  XIII.  3),  and  Cynicism.  While 
he  will  not  admit  with  Aristippus  that  pleasure  is  the  true  good, 
neither  will  he  find  it  as  the  Cynics  maintain,  simply  in  the  nega- 
tion of  its  contrary,  pain,  and  thus  deny  that  it  belongs  to  the 
good  things  of  human  life.  He  finds  his  refutation  of  Hedonism 
in  the  indeterminateness  and  relativity  of  all  pleasure,  since  that 
which  at  one  time  may  seem  as  pleasure,  under  other  circum- 
stances may  appear  as  pain ;  and  since  he  who  chooses  pleasure 
without  distinction,  will  find  impure  pleasures  always  combined 
in  his  life  with  more  or  less  of  pain ;  his  refutation  of  Cynicism 
he  establishes  by  showing  the  necessary  connection  between  virtue 
and  true  pleasure,  showing  that  there  is  a  true  and  enduring  plea- 
sure, the  pleasure  of  reason,  found  in  the  possession  of  truth  and 
of  goodness,  while  a  rational  condition  separate  from  all  pleasure, 
cannot  be  the  highest  good  of  a  finite  being.  It  is  most  promi- 
nently by  this  distinction  of  a  true  and  false,  of  a  pure  and  im- 
pure pleasure,  that  Plato  adjusts  the  controversy  of  the  two 
Socratic  schools. — A  detailed  exhibition  of  the  Philebus  we  must 
here  omit. — On  the  whole,  in  the  Platonic  apprehension  of  plea- 
sure, we  cannot  but  notice  that  same  vacillation  with  which  Plato 
every  where  treats  of  the  relation  between  the  corporeal  and  the 
spiritual,  at  one  time  considering  the  former  as  a  hindrance  to  the 
latter,  and  at  another  as  its  serving  instrument ;  now,  regarding  it 
as  a  concurring  cause  to  the  good,  and  then,  as  the  ground  of  all 
evil ;  here,  as  something  purely  negative,  and  there,  as  a  positive 
substratum  which  supports  all  the  higher  intellectual  develop- 
ments; and  in  conformity  with  this,  pleasure  is  also  considered  at 
one  time  as  something  equivalent  to  a  moral  act,  and  to  knowl- 
edge, and  at  another  as  the  means  and  accidental  consequence  of 
the  good. 


102 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


2.  Virtue. — In  Ms  theory  of  virtue,  Plato  is  wholly  Socratic. 
He  holds  fast  to  the  opinion  that  it  is  science  {Protagoras),  and 
therefore,  teachable  (Meno),  and  as  to  its  unity,  it  follows  from 
the  dialectical  principle  that  the  one  can  be  manifold,  or  the  man- 
ifold one,  that,  therefore,  virtue  must  both  be  regarded  as  one, 
and  also  in  a  different  respect,  as  many.  Plato  thus  brings  out 
prominently  the  union  and  connection  of  all  virtues,  and  is  fond 
of  painting,  especially  in  the  introductory  dialogues,  some  single 
virtue  as  comprising  in  itself  the  sum  of.  all  the  rest.  Plato  fol- 
lows for  the  most  part  the  fourfold  division  of  virtues,  as  popu- 
larly made;  and  first,  in  the  Republic  (TV.  441),  he  attempts  a 
scientific  derivation  of  them,  by  referring  to  each  of  the  three 
parts  of  the  soul  its  appropriate  virtue  The  virtue  of  the  reason 
he  calls  prudence  or  wisdom,  the  directing  or  measuring  virtue, 
without  whose  activity  valor  would  sink  to  brute  impulse,  and 
calm  endurance  to  stupid  indifference;  the  virtue  of  spirit  is 
valor,  the  help-meet  of  reason,  or  spirit  (S-v}x6<s)  penetrated  by 
science,  which  in  the  struggle  against  pleasure  and  pain,  desire 
and  fear,  preserves  the  rational  intelligence  against  the  alarms 
with  which  sensuous  desires,  would  seek  to  sway  the  soul ;  the 
virtue  of  the  sensuous  desires,  and  which  has  to  reduce  these 
within  true  and  proper  grounds,  is  temperance,  and  that  virtue  in 
fine  to  which  belong  the  due  regulation  and  mutual  adjustment  of 
the  several  powers  of  the  soul,  and  which,  therefore,  constitutes 
the  bond  and  the  unity  of  the  three  other  virtues,  is  justice. 

In  this  last  conception,  that  of  justice,  all  the  elements  of 
moral  culture  meet  together  and  centre,  exhibiting  the  moral  life 
of  the  individual  as  a  perfect  whole,  and  then,  by  requiring  an 
application  of  the  same  principle  to  communities,  the  moral  con- 
sideration is  advanced  beyond  the  narrow  circle  of  individual 
life.  Thus  is  established  the  whole  of  the  moral  world — Justice 
"  in  great  letters,"  the  moral  life  in  its  complete  totality,  is  the 
state.  In  this  is  first  actualized  the  demand  for  the  complete 
harmony  of  the  human  life.  In  and  through  the  state  comes  the 
complete  formation  of  matter  for  the  reason. 

3.  The  State. — The  Platonic  state  is  generally  regarded  as 


PLATO. 


103 


an  ideal  or  chimera,  which  it  is  impracticable  to  realize  among 
men.  This  view  of  the  case  has  even  been  ascribed  to  Plato,  and 
it  has  been  said  that  in  his  Eejpuhlic  he  attempted  to  sketch  only 
a  fine  ideal  of  a  state  constitution,  while  in  the  Laivs  he  traced 
out  a  practicable  philosophy  of  the  state  from  the  stand-point  of 
the  common  consciousness.  But  in  the  first  place,  this  was  not 
Plato's  true  meaning.  Although  he  acknowledges  that  the  state 
he  describes  cannot  be  found  on  earth,  and  has  its  archetype  only 
in  heaven,  by  which  the  philosopher  ought  to  form  himself  (IX. 
592),  still  he  demands  that  efforts  should  be  made  to  realize  it 
here,  and  he  even  attempts  to  show  the  conditions  and  means  un- 
der which  such  a  state  could  be  made  actual,  not  overlooking  in 
all  this  the  defects  arising  from  the  different  characters  and  tem- 
peraments of  men.  A  composition,  dissociated  from  the  idea, 
could  only  appear  untrue  to  a  philosopher  like  Plato,  who  saw 
the  actual  and  the  true  only  in  the  idea ;  and  the  common  view 
which  supposes  that  he  wrote  his  Eepublic  in  the  full  conscious- 
ness of  its  impracticability,  mistakes  entirely  the  stand-point  of 
the  Platonic  philosophy.  Still  farther  the  question  whether  such 
a  state  as  the  Platonic  is  attainable  and  the  best,  is  generally  per- 
verted. The  Platonic  state  is  the  Grecian  state-idea  given  in  a 
narrative  form.  It  is  no  vain  and  powerless  ideal  to  picture  the 
idea  as  a  rational  principle  in  every  moment  of  the  world's  history, 
since  the  idea  itself  is  that  which  is  absolutely  actual,  that  which 
is  essential  and  necessary  in  existing  things.  The  truly  ideal 
ought  not  to  be  actual,  but  is  actual,  and  the  only  actual ;  if  an 
idea  were  too  good  for  existence,  or  the  empirical  actuality  too 
bad  for  it,  then  were  this  a  fault  of  the  ideal  itself.  Plato  has 
not  given  himself  up  merely  to  abstract  theories ;  the  philosopher 
cannot  leap  beyond  his  age,  but  can  only  see  and  grasp  it  in  its 
true  content.  This  Plato  has  done.  His  stand-point  is  his  own 
age.  He  looks  upon  the  political  life  of  the  Greeks  as  then  exist- 
ing, and  it  is  this  life,  exalted  to  its  idea,  which  forms  the  real 
content  of  the  Platonic  Republic.  Plato  has  here  represented 
the  Grecian  morality  in  its  substantial  condition.  If  the  Platonic 
Republic  seems  prominently  an  ideal  which  can  never  be  realized 


104 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


this  is  owing  much  less  to  its  ideality  than  to  the  defects  of 
the  old  political  life.  The  most  prominent  characteristic  of  the 
Hellenic  conception  of  the  state,  before  the  Greeks  began  to  fall 
into  unbridled  licentiousness,  was  the  constraint  thrown  upon 
personal  subjective  freedom,  in  the  sacrifice  of  every  individual 
interest  to  the  absolute  sovereignty  of  the  state.  With  Plato 
also,  the  state  is  every  thing.  His  political  institutions,  so  loudly 
ridiculed  by  the  ancients,  are  only  the  undeniable  consequences 
following  from  the  very  idea  of  the  Grecian  state,  which  allowed 
neither  to  the  individual  citizen  nor  to  a  corporation,  any  lawful 
sphere  of  action  independent  of  itself. 

The  grand  feature  of  the  Platonic  state  is,  as  has  been  said, 
the  exclusive  sacrifice  of  the  individual  to  the  state,  the  reference 
of  moral  to  political  virtue.  Since  man  cannot  reach  his  complete 
development  in  isolation  but  only  as  a  member  of  an  organic  soci- 
ety (the  state),  Plato  therefore  concludes  that  the  individual  pur- 
pose should  wholly  conform  to  the  general  aim,  and  that  the  state 
must  represent  a  perfect  and  harmonious  unity,  and  be  a  counterpart 
of  the  moral  life  of  the  individual.  In  a  perfect  state  all  things, 
joy  and  sorrow,  and  even  eyes,  ears  and  hands,  must  be  common 
to  all,  so  that  the  social  life  would  be  as  it  were  the  life  of  one 
man.  This  perfect  universality  and  unity,  can  only  be  actualized 
when  every  thing  individual  and  particular  falls  away,  and  hence 
the  difficulty  of  the  Platonic  Republic.  Private  property  and 
domestic  life  (in  place  of  which  comes  a  community  of  goods  and 
of  wives),  the  duty  of  education,  the  choice  of  rank  and  profession, 
the  arts  and  sciences,  all  these  must  be  subjected  and  placed  un- 
der the  exclusive  and  absolute  control  of  the  state.  The  individ- 
ual may  lay  claim  only  to  that  happiness  which  belongs  to  him  as 
a  constituent  element  of  the  state.  From  this  point  Plato  goes 
down  into  the  minutest  particulars,  and  gives  the  closest  directions 
respecting  gymnastics  and  music,  which  form  the  two  means  of 
culture  of  the  higher  ranks ;  respecting  the  study  of  mathematics, 
and  philosophy,  the  choice  of  stringed  instruments,  and  the  proper 
measure  of  verse  ;  respecting  bodily  exercise  and  the  service  of 
women  in  war ;  respecting  marriage  settlements,  and  the  age  at 


PLATO. 


105 


wtich  any  one  should  study  dialectics,  marry,  and  beget  children. 
The  state  with  him  is  only  a  great  educational  establishment,  a 
family  in  the  mass. — Lyric  poetry  he  would  allow  only  under  the 
inspection  of  competent  judges.  Epic  and  dramatic  poetry,  even 
Homer  and  Hesiod,  should  be  banished  from  the  state,  since  they 
rouse  and  lead  astray  the  passions,  and  give  unworthy  representa- 
tions of  the  gods.  Exhibitions  of  physical  degeneracy  or  weak- 
ness should  not  be  tolerated  in  the  Platonic  state ;  deformed  and 
sickly  infants  should  be  abandoned,  and  food  and  attention  should 
be  denied  to  the  sick. — In  all  this  we  find  the  chief  antithesis  of 
the  ancient  to  the  modern  state.  Plato  did  not  recognize  the  will 
and  choice  of  the  individual,  and  yet  the  individual  has  a  right  to 
demand  this.  The  problem  of  the  modern  state  has  been  to  unite 
these  two  sides,  to  bring  the  universal  end  and  the  particular  end 
of  the  individual  into  harmony,  to  reconcile  the  highest  possible 
freedom  of  the  conscious  individual  will,  with  the  highest  possible 
supremacy  of  the  state. 

The  political  institutions  of  the  Platonic  state  are  decidedly 
aristocratic.  Grown  up  in  opposition  to  the  extravagances  of  the 
Athenian  democracy,  Plato  prefers  an  absolute  monarchy  to  every 
other  constitution,  though  this  should  have  as  its  absolute  ruler 
only  the  perfect  philosopher.  It  is  a  well-known  expression  of  his, 
that  the  state  can  only  attain  its  end  when  philosophers  become 
its  rulers,  or  when  its  present  rulers  have  carried  their  studies  so 
far  and  so  accurately,  that  they  can  unite  philosophy  with  a  super- 
intendence of  public  affairs  (Y.  473).  His  reason  for  claiming 
that  the  sovereign  power  should  be  vested  only  in  one,  is  the  fact 
that  very  few  are  endowed  with  political  wisdom.  This  ideal  of 
an  absolute  ruler  who  should  be  able  to  lead  the  state  perfectly, 
Plato  abandons  in  the  Laivs^  in  which  work  he  shows  his  prefer- 
ence for  a  mixed  constitution,  embracing  both  a  monarchical  and 
an  aristocratic  element.  From  the  aristocratic  tendency  of  the 
Platonic  ideal  of  a  state,  follows  farther  the  sharp  division  of 
ranks,  and  the  total  exclusion  of  the  third  rank  from  a  proper 
political  life.  In  reality  Plato  makes  but  two  classes  in  his  state, 
the  subjects  and  the  sovereign,  analogous  to  his  twofold  psycho- 


106 


A  fflSTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


logical  division  of  sensible  and  intellectual,  mortal  and  immortal , 
but  as  in  psychology  he  had  introduced  a  middle  step,  spirit,  to 
stand  between  his  two  divisions  there,  so  in  the  state  he  brings  in 
the  military  class  between  the  ruler  and  those  intended  to  supply 
the  bodily  wants  of  the  community.  We  have  thus  three  ranks, 
that  of  the  ruler,  corresponding  to  the  reason,  that  of  the  watcher 
or  warrior,  answering  to  spirit,  and  that  of  the  craftsman,  which 
is  made  parallel  to  the  appetites  or  sensuous  desires.  To  these 
three  ranks  belong  three  separate  functions :  to  the  first,  that  of 
making  the  law  and  caring  for  the  general  good ;  to  the  second, 
that  of  defending  the  public  welfare  from  attacks  of  external  foes; 
and  to  the  third,  the  care  of  separate  interests  and  wants,  as  agri- 
culture, mechanics,  &c.  From  each  of  these  three  ranks  and  its 
functions  the  state  derives  a  peculiar  virtue — wisdom  from  the 
ruler,  bravery  from  the  warrior,  and  temperance  from  the  crafts- 
man, so  far  as  he  lives  in  obedience  to  his  rulers.  In  the  proper 
union  of  these  three  virtues  is  found  the  justice  of  the  state,  a 
virtue  which  is  thus  the  sum  of  all  other  virtues.  Plato  pays 
little  attention  to  the  lowest  rank,  that  of  the  craftsman,  who  exists 
in  the  state  only  as  means.  He  held  that  it  was  not  necessary  to 
give  laws  and  care  for  the  rights  of  this  portion  of  the  community. 
The  separation  between  the  ruler  and  the  warrior  is  not  so  broad. 
PJato  suffers  these  two  ranks  to  interpenetrate  each  other,  and 
analogous  to  his  original  psychological  division,  as  though  the 
reason  were  but  spirit  in  the  highest  step  of  its  development,  h3 
makes  the  oldest  and  the  best  of  the  warriors  rise  to  the  dignity 
and  power  of  the  rulers.  The  education  of  its  warriors  should 
therefore  be  a  chief  care  of  the  state,  in  order  that  their  spirit, 
i hough  losing  none  of  its  peculiar  energy,  may  yet  be  penetrated 
by  reason.  The  best  endowed  by  nature  and  culture  among  the 
warriors,  may  be  selected  at  the  age  of  thirty,  and  put  upon  a 
course  of  careful  training.  When  he  has  reached  the  age  of  fifty 
and  looked  upon  the  idea  of  the  good,  he  may  be  bound  to  actual- 
ize this  archetype  in  the  state,  provided  always  that  every  one 
wait  his  turn,  ai:d  spend  his  remaining  time  in  philosophy.  Only 
thus  can  the  state  be  raised  to  the  unconditioned  rule  of  reason 
under  the  supremacy  of  the  good. 


THE  OLD  ACADEMY. 


107 


SECTION  XV. 

THE  OLD  ACADEMY. 

In  the  old  Academy,  we  lose  the  presence  of  inventive  genius ; 
with  few  exceptions  we  find  here  no  movements  of  progress,  but 
rather  a  gradual  retrogression  of  the  Platonic  philosophizing. 
After  the  death  of  Plato,  Speusippus,  his  nephew  and  disciple, 
held  the  chair  of  his  master  in  the  Academy  during  eight  years. 
He  was  succeeded  by  Xenocrates,  after  whom  we  meet  with  Polemo, 
Crates,  and  Crantor.  It  was  a  time  in  which  schools  for  high 
culture  were  established,  and  the  older  teacher  yielded  to  his 
younger  successor  the  post  of  instruction.  The  general  charac- 
teristics of  the  old  Academy,  so  far  as  can  be  gathered  from  the 
scanty  accounts,  were  great  attention  to  learning,  the  prevalence 
of  Pythagorean  elements,  especially  the  doctrine  of  numbers,  and 
lastly,  the  reception  of  fantastic  and  demonological  notions,  among 
which  the  worship  of  the  stars  played  a  part.  The  prevalence 
of  the  Pythagorean  doctrine  of  numbers  in  the  later  instruc- 
tions of  the  Academy,  gave  to  mathematical  sciences,  particularly 
arithmetic  and  astronomy,  a  high  place,  and  at  the  same  time  as- 
signed to  the  docrine  of  ideas  a  much  lower  position  than  Plato 
had  given  it.  Subsequently,  the  attempt  was  made  to  get  back 
to  the  unadulterated  doctrine  of  Plato.  Crantor  is  said  to  be  the 
first  editor  of  the  Platonic  writings. 

As  Plato  was  the  only  true  Socraticist,  so  was  Aristotle  the 
only  genuine  disciple  of  Plato,  though  often  abused  by  his  fellow- 
disciples  as  unfaithful  to  his  master's  principles. 

We  pass  on  at  once  to  him,  without  stopping  now  to  inquire 
into  his  relation  to  Plato,  or  the  advance  which  he  made  beyond 
his  predecessor,  since  these  points  will  come  up  before  us  in  the 
exhibition  of  the  Aristotelian  philosophy.    {See  §  XYI :  III.  1.) 


108 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHTLOSOPHY. 


SECTION  XVI. 

ARISTOTLE. 

I.  Life  and  Writings  of  Aristotle. — Aristotle  was  born 
384  B.  C.  at  Stagira,  a  Greek  colony  in  Thrace.  His  father, 
Nicomachus,  was  a  physician,  and  the  friend  of  Amyntas,  king 
of  Macedonia.  The  former  fact  may  have  had  its  influence  in 
determining  the  scientific  direction  of  the  son,  and  the  latter  may 
have  procured  his  subsequent  summons  to  the  Macedonian  court. 
Aristotle  at  a  very  early  age  lost  both  his  parents.  In  his  seven- 
teenth year  he  came  to  Plato  at  Athens,  and  continued  with  him 
twenty  years.  On  account  of  his  indomitable  zeal  for  study, 
Plato  named  him  "  the  Teacher,"  and  said,  upon  comparing  him 
with  Xenocrates,  that  the  latter  required  the  spur,  the  former  the 
bit.  Among  the  many  charges  made  against  his  character,  most 
prominent  are  those  of  jealousy  and  ingratitude  towards  his  mas- 
ter, but  most  of  the  anecdotes  in  which  these  charges  are  embo- 
died merit  little  credence.  It  is  certain  that  Aristotle,  after 
the  death  of  Plato,  stood  in  friendly  relations  with  Xenocrates  ; 
still,  as  a  writer,  he  can  hardly  be  absolved  from  a  certain  want 
of  friendship  and  regard  towards  Plato  and  his  philosophy, 
though  all  this  can  be  explained  on  psychological  grounds.  Af- 
ter Plato's  death,  Aristotle  went  with  Xenocrates  to  Hermeas, 
tyrant  of  Atarneus,  whose  sister  Pythias  he  married  after  Her- 
meas had  fallen  a  prey  to  Persian  violence.  After  the  death  of 
Pythias  he  is  said  to  have  married  his  concubine,  Herpyllis,  who 
was  the  mother  of  his  son  Nicomachus.  In  the  year  343  he  was 
called  by  Philip  of  Macedon,  to  take  the  charge  of  the  education 
of  his  son  Alexander,  then  thirteen  years  old.  Both  father  and 
son  honored  him  highly,  and  the  latter,  with  royal  munificence, 
subsequently  supported  him  in  his  studies.  When  Alexander 
went  to  Persia,  Aristotle  betook  himself  to  Athens,  and  taught 
in  the  Lyceum,  the  only  gymnasium  then  vacant,  since  Xenocrates 
had  possession  of  the  Academy,  and  the  Cynics  of  the  Cyno- 


AKISTOTLE. 


109 


eaerges.  From  the  shady  walks  (TreptVaTot)  of  the  Lyceum,  in 
which  Aristotle  was  accustomed  to  walk  and  expound  his  philos- 
ophy, his  school  received  the  name  of  the  Peripatetic.  Aristotle 
is  said  to  have  spent  his  mornings  with  his  more  mature  disciples, 
exercising  them  in  the  profoundest  questions  of  philosophy,  while 
his  evenings  were  occupied  with  a  greater  number  of  pupils  in  a 
more  general  and  preparatory  instruction.  The  former  investiga- 
tions were  called  acroamatic,  the  latter  exoteric.  He  abode  at 
Athens,  and  taught  thirteen  years,  and  then,  after  the  death  of 
Alexander,  whose  displeasure  he  had  incurred,  he  is  said  to  have 
been  accused  by  the  Athenians  of  impiety  towards  the  gods,  and 
to  have  fled  to  Chalcis,  in  order  to  escape  a  fate  similar  to  that 
of  Socrates.    He  died  in  the  year  322  at  Chalcis,  in  Eubaea. 

Aristotle  left  a  vast  number  of  writingSj  of  which  the  smaller 
(perhaps  a  fourth),  but  unquestionably  the  more  important  portion 
have  come  down  to  us,  though  in  a  form  which  cannot  be  received 
without  some  scruples.  The  story  of  Strabo  about  the  fate  of 
the  Aristotelian  writings,  and  the  injury  which  they  suff'ered  in 
a  cellar  at  Scepsis,  is  confessedly  a  fable,  or  at  least  limited  to 
the  original  manuscripts;  but  the  fragmentary  and  descriptive 
form  which  many  among  them,  and  even  the  most  important  {e.  g. 
the  metaphysics)  possess,  the  fact  that  scattered  portions  of  one 
and  the  same  work  {e.  g.  the  ethics)  are  repeatedly  found  in  dif- 
ferent treatises,  the  irregularities  and  striking  contradictions  in 
one  and  the  same  writing,  the  disagreement  found  in  other  par- 
ticulars among  different  works,  and  the  distinction  made  by  Aris- 
totle himself  between  acroamatic  and  exoterical  writings,  all  this 
gives  reason  to  believe  that  we  have,  for  the  most  part,  before  us 
only  his  oral  lectures  written  down,  and  subsequently  edited  by 
his  scholars. 

II.  Universal  Character  and  Division  of  the  Aristote- 
lian Philosophy. — With  Plato,  philosophy  had  been  national  in 
both  its  form  and  content,  but  with  Aristotle,  it  loses  its  Hellenic 
peculiarity,  and  becomes  universal  in  scope  and  meaning ;  the 
Platonic  dialogue  changes  into  barren  prose ;  a  rigid,  artistic 
language  takes  the  place  of  the  mythical  and  poetical  dress  ;  the 


110 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


thinking  which  had  been  with  Plato  intuitive,  is  with  Aristotle 
discursive ;  the  immediate  beholding  of  reason  in  the  former,  be- 
comes reflection  and  conception  in  the  latter.  Turning  away 
from  the  Platonic  unity  of  all  being,  Aristotle  prefers  to  direct 
his  attention  to  the  manifoldness  of  the  phenomenal ;  he  seeks 
the  idea  only  in  its  concrete  actualization,  and  consequently  grasps 
the  particular  far  more  prominently  in  its  peculiar  determinate- 
ness  and  reciprocal  difi"erences,  than  in  its  connection  with  the 
idea.  He  embraces  with  equal  interest  the  facts  given  in  nature, 
in  history,  and  in  the  inner  life  of  man.  But  he  ever  tends 
toward  the  individual,  he  must  ever  have  a  fact  given  in  order  to 
develop e  his  thought  upon  it ;  it  is  always  the  empirical,  the  ac- 
tual, which  solicits  and  guides  his  speculation ;  his  whole  course 
is  a  description  of  the  facts  given,  and  only  merits  the  name  of  a 
philosophy  because  it  comprehends  the  empirical  in  its  totality 
and  synthesis ;  because  it  has  carried  out  its  induction  to  the  far- 
thest extent.  Only  because  he  is  the  absolute  empiricist  may 
Aristotle  be  called  the  truly  philosopher. 

This  character  of  the  Aristotelian  philosophy  explains  at  the 
outset  its  encyclopedian  tendency,  inasmuch  as  every  thing 
given  in  experience  is  equally  worthy  of  regard  and  investigation. 
Aristotle  is  thus  the  founder  of  many  courses  of  study  unknown 
before  him  ;  he  is  not  only  the  father  of  logic,  but  also  of  natural 
history,  empirical  psychology,  and  the  science  of  natural  rights. 

This  devotion  of  Aristotle  to  that  which  is  given  will  also  ex- 
plain his  predominant  inclination  towards  physics,  for  nature  is  the 
most  immediate  and  actual.  Connected  also  with  this  is  the  fact 
that  Aristotle  is  the  first  among  philosophers  who  has  given  to 
history  and  its  tendencies  an  accurate  attention.  The  first  book 
of  the  Metaphysics  is  also  the  first  attempt  at  a  history  of  phi- 
losophy, as  his  politics  is  the  first  critical  history  of  the  difierent 
states  and  constitutions.  In  both  these  cases  he  brings  out  his 
own  theory  only  as  the  consequence  of  that  which  has  been  his- 
torically given,  basing  it  in  the  former  case  upon  the  works  of  his 
predecessors,  and  in  the  latter  case  upon  the  constitutions  which 
lie  before  him. 


ARISTOTLE. 


Ill 


It  is  clear  that  according  to  this,  the  method  of  Aristotle  must 
be  a  different  one  from  that  of  Plato.  Instead  of  proceeding  like 
the  latter,  synthetically  and  dialectically,  he  pursues  for  the  most 
part  an  analytic  and  regressive  course,  that  is,  going  backward 
from  the  concrete  to  its  ultimate  ground  and  determination. 
While  Plato  would  take  his  stand-point  in  the  idea,  in  order  to 
explain  from  this  position  and  set  in  a  clearer  light  that  which  is 
given  and  empirical,  Aristotle  on  the  other  hand,  starts  with  that 
which  is  given,  in  order  to  find  and  exhibit  the  idea  in  it.  His 
method  is,  hence,  induction;  that  is,  the  derivation  of  certain 
principles  and  maxims  from  a  sum  of  given  facts  and  phenomena; 
his  mode  of  procedure  is,  usually,  argument,  a  barren  balancing 
of  facts,  phenomena,  circumstances  and  possibilities.  He  stands 
out  for  the  most  part  only  as  the  thoughtful  observer.  Renoun- 
cing all  claim  to  universality  and  necessity  in  his  results,  he  is  con- 
tent to  have  brought  out  that  which  has  an  approximative  truth, 
and  the  highest  degree  of  probability.  He  often  affirms  that 
science  does  not  simply  relate  to  the  changeless  and  necessary,  but 
also  to  that  which  ordinarily  takes  place,  that  being  alone  ex- 
cluded from  its  province,  which  is  strictly  accidental.  Philoso- 
phy, consequently,  has  with  him  the  character  and  worth  of  a 
reckoning  of  probabilities,  and  his  mode  of  exhibition  assumes 
not  unfrequently  only  the  form  of  a  doubtful  deliberation.  Hence 
there  is  no  trace  of  the  Platonic  ideals,  hence,  also,  his  repugnance 
to  a  glowing  and  poetic  style  in  philosophy,  a  repugnance  which, 
while  indeed  it  induces  in  him  a  fixed,  philosophical  terminology, 
also  frequently  leads  him  to  mistake  and  misrepresent  the  opinions 
of  his  predecessors.  Hence,  also,  in  whatever  he  treated,  his 
thorough  adherence  to  that  which  is  actually  given. 

Connected  in  fine  with  the  empirical  character  of  the  Aristo- 
telian philosophizing,  is  the  fragmentary  form  of  his  writings,  and 
their  want  of  a  systematic  division  and  arrangement.  Proceed- 
ing always  in  the  line  of  that  which  is  given,  from  individual  to 
individual,  he  considers  every  province  of  the  actual  by  itself, 
and  makes  it  the  subject  of  a  separate  treatise ;  but  he,  for  the 
most  part,  fails  to  indicate  the  lines  by  which  the  different  parts 


112 


A  HISTORr  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


hang  together,  and  are  comprehended  in  a  systematic  whole. 
Thus  he  holds  up  a  number  of  co-ordinate  sciences,  each  one  of 
which  has  an  independent  basis,  but  he  fails  to  give  us  the  highest 
science  which  embraces  them  all.  The  principle  is  sometimes 
affirmed  that  all  the  writings  follow  the  idea  of  a  whole ;  but  in 
their  procedure  there  is  such  a  want  of  all  systematic  connection, 
and  every  one  of  his  writings  is  a  monograph  so  thoroughly  inde- 
pendent and  complete  in  itself,  that  we  are  sometimes  puzzled  to 
know  what  Aristotle  himself  received  as  a  part  of  philosophy,  and 
what  he  excluded.  We  are  never  furnished  with  an  independent 
scheme  or  outline,  we  rarely  find  definite  results  or  summary  ex- 
planations, and  even  the  difi"erent  divisions  of  philosophy  which 
he  gives,  vary  essentially  from  one  another.  At  one  time  he 
divides  science  into  theoretical  and  practical,  at  another,  he  adds 
to  these  two  a  poetical  creative  science,  while  still  again  he  speaks 
of  the  three  parts  of  science,  ethics,  physics,  and  logic.  At  one 
time  he  divides  the  theoretical  philosophy  into  logic  and  physics, 
and  at  another  into  theology,  mathematics,  and  physics.  Eut  no 
one  of  these  divisions  has  he  expressly  given  as  the  basis  on  which 
to  represent  his  system ;  he  himself  places  no  value  upon  this 
method  of  division,  and,  indeed,  openly  declares  himself  opposed 
to  it.  It  is,  therefore,  only  for  the  sake  of  uniformity  that  we 
can  give  the  preference  here  to  the  threefold  division  of  philoso- 
phy as  already  adopted  by  Plato. 

III.  Logic  and  Metaphysics.  1.  Coxception  and  Rela- 
tion OF  THE  Two. — The  word  metaphysics  was  first  furnished  by 
the  Aristotelian  commentators.  Plato  had  used  the  term  dialec- 
tics, and  Aristotle  had  characterized  the  same  thing  as  "  first  phi- 
losophy," while  he  calls  physics  the  "  second  philosophy."  The 
relation  of  this  first  philosophy  to  the  other  sciences  Aristotle  de- 
termines in  the  following  way.  Every  science,  he  says,  must  have 
for  investigation  a  determined  province  and  separate  form  of  being, 
but  none  of  these  sciences  reaches  the  conception  of  being  itself 
Hence  there  is  needed  a  science  which  should  investigate  that 
which  the  other  sciences  take  up  hypothetically,  or  through  ex- 
perience.   This  is  done  by  the  first  philosophy  which  has  to  do 


ARISTOTLE. 


113 


with  being  as  such,  while  the  other  sciences  relate  only  to  deter- 
mined and  concrete  being.  The  metaphysics,  which  is  this  science 
of  being  and  its  primitive  grounds,  is  the  first  philosophy,  since 
it  is  presupposed  by  every  other  discipline.  Thus,  says  Aristotle, 
if  there  were  only  a  physical  substance,  then  would  physics  be  the 
first  and  the  only  philosophy,  but  if  there  be  an  immaterial  and 
unmoved  essence  which  is  the  ground  of  all  being,  then  must  there 
also  be  an  antecedent,  and  because  it  is  antecedent,  a  universal 
philosophy.  The  first  ground  of  all  being  is  God,  whence  Aris- 
totle occasionally  gives  to  the  first  philosophy  the  name  of  theo 

logy- 
It  is  difficult  to  determine  the  relation  between  this  first  phi- 
losophy as  the  science  of  the  ultimate  ground  of  things,  and  that 
science  which  is  ordinarily  termed  the  logic  of  Aristotle,  and 
which  is  exhibited  in  the  writings  bearing  the  name  of  the  Orga- 
non.  Aristotle  himself  has  not  accurately  examined  the  relations 
of  these  two  sciences,  the  reason  of  which  is  doubtless  to  be  found 
in  the  incomplete  form  of  the  metaphysics.  But  since  he  has  em- 
braced them  both  under  the  same  name  of  logic,  since  the  investi- 
gation of  the  essence  of  things  (VII.  17),  and  the  doctrine  of 
ideas  (XIII.  5),  are  expressly  called  logical,  since  he  repeatedly 
attempts  in  the  Metaphysics  {Booh  lY.),  to  establish  the  logical 
principle  of  contradiction  as  an  absolute  presupposition  for  all 
thinking  and  speaking  and  philosophizing,  and  employs  the  me- 
thod of  argument  belonging  to  that  science  which  has  to  do  with 
the  essence  of  things  (III.  2.  lY.  3),  and  since,  in  fine,  the  cate- 
gories to  which  he  had  already  dedicated  a  separate  book  in  the 
Organon  are  also  discussed  again  in  the  Metaphysics  [Booh  Y.), 
it  follows  that  this  much  at  least  may  be  affirmed  with  certainty, 
that  he  would  not  absolutely  separate  the  investigations  of  the 
Organon  from  those  of  the  Metaphysics,  and  that  he  would  not 
counsel  the  ordinary  division  of  formal  logic  and  metaphysics, 
although  he  has  omitted  to  show  more  clearly  their  inner  connec- 
tion. 

2.  Logic. — The  great  problem  both  of  the  logical  faculty  and 
also  of  logic  both  as  science  and  art,  consists  in  this,  viz.,  to  form 


114 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


and  judge  of  conclusions,  and  through  conclusions  to  be  able  to 
establish  a  proof.  The  conclusions,  however,  arise  from  proposi- 
tions, and  the  propositions  from  conceptions.  According  to  this 
natural  point  of  view,  which  lies  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case, 
Aristotle  has  divided  the  content  of  the  logical  and  dialectical 
doctrine  contained  in  the  different  treatises  of  the  Organon.  The 
first  treatise  in  the  Organon  is  that  containing  the  categories^  a 
work  which  treats  of  the  universal  determinations  of  being,  and 
gives  the  first  attempt  at  an  ontology.  Of  these  categories  Aris- 
totle enumerates  ten ;  essence,  magnitude,  quality,  relation,  the 
where,  the  when,  position,  habit,  action,  and  passion.  The  second 
treatise  (de  interpretatione)  investigates  speech  as  the  expression 
of  thought,  and  discusses  the  doctrine  of  the  parts  of  speech,  pro- 
positions and  judgments.  The  third  are  the  analytic  books,  which 
show  how  conclusions  may  be  referred  back  to  their  principles 
and  arranged  in  order  of  their  antecedence.  The  first  Analytic 
contains  in  two  books  the  universal  doctrine  of  the  Syllogism. 
Conclusions  are  according  to  their  content  and  end  either  apodic- 
tic,  which  possess  a  certain  and  incontrovertible  truth,  or  dialectic, 
which  are  directed  toward  that  which  may  be  disputed  and  is 
probable,  or,  finally,  sophistic,  which  are  announced  deceptively 
as  correct  conclusions  while  they  are  not.  The  doctrine  of  apo- 
dictic  conclusions  and  thus  of  proofs  is  given  in  the  two  books  of 
the  second  Analytic,  that  of  dialectic,  is  furnished  in  the  eight 
books  of  the  Topic,  and  that  of  sophistic  in  the  treatise  concern- 
ing "  Sophistical  Convictions." 

A  closer  statement  of  the  Aristotelian  logic  would  be  familiar 
to  every  one,  since  the  formal'^epresentations  of  this  science  ordi- 
narily given,  employ  for  the  most  part  only  the  material  furnished 
by  Aristotle.  Kant  has  remarked,  that  since  the  time  of  the 
Grecian  sage,  logic  has  made  neither  progress  nor  retrogression. 
Only  in  two  points  has  the  formal  logic  of  our  time  advanced  be- 
yond that  of  Aristotle  ;  first,  in  adding  to  the  categorical  conclu- 
sion which  was  the  only  one  Aristotle  had  in  mind,  the  hypothetical 
and  disjunctive,  and  second,  in  adding  the  fourth  to  the  first  three 
figures  of  conclusion.    But  the  incompleteness  of  the  Aristotelian 


ARISTOTLE. 


115 


logic,  which  might  be  pardoned  in  the  founder  of  this  science,  yet 
abides,  and  its  thoroughly  empirical  method  not  only  still  con- 
tinues, but  has  even  been  exalted  to  a  principle  by  making  the 
antithesis,  which  Aristotle  did  not,  between  the  form  of  a  thought 
and  the  content.  Aristotle,  in  reality,  only  attempted  to  collect 
the  logical  facts  in  reference  to  the  formation  of  propositions,  and 
the  method  of  conclusions ;  he  has  given  in  his  logic  only  the 
natural  history  of  finite  thinking.  However  highly  now  we  may 
rate  the  correctness  of  his  abstraction,  and  the  clearness  with 
which  he  brings  into  consciousness  the  logical  operation  of  the 
understanding,  we  must  make  equally  conspicuous  with  this  the 
want  of  all  scientific  derivation  and  foundation.  The  ten  catego- 
ries which  he,  as  already  remarked,  has  discussed  in  a  separate 
treatise,  he  simply  mentions,  without  furnishing  any  ground  or 
principle  for  this  enumeration;  that  there  are  this  number  of 
categories  is  only  a  matter  of  fact  to  him,  and  he  even  cites  them 
differently  in  different  writings.  In  the  same  way  also  he  takes 
up  the  figures  of  the  conclusion  empirically ;  he  considers  them 
only  as  forms  and  determinations  of  relation  of  the  formal  think- 
ing, and  continues  thus,  although  he  allows  the  conclusion  to  stand 
for  the  only  form  of  science  within  the  province  of  the  logic  of  the 
understanding.  Neither  in  his  Metaphysics  nor  in  his  Physics 
does  he  cite  the  rules  of  the  formal  methods  of  conclusion  which 
he  develops  in  the  Organon,  clearly  proving  that  he  has  nowhere 
in  his  system  properly  elaborated  either  his  categories  or  his 
analytic ;  his  logical  investigations  do  not  influence  generally  the 
development  of  his  philosophical  thought,  but  have  for  the  most 
part  only  the  value  of  a  preliminary  scrutiny. 

3.  Metaphysics. — Among  all  the  Aristotelian  writings,  the 
Metaphysics  is  least  entitled  to  be  called  a  connected  whole ;  it  is 
only  a  connection  of  sketches,  which,  though  they  follow  a  certain 
fundamental  idea,  utterly  fail  of  an  inner  mediation  and  a  per- 
fect development.  We  may  distinguish  in  i$  seven  distinct 
groups.  (1)  Criticism  of  the  previous  philosophic  systems  viewed  in 
the  light  of  the  four  Aristotelian  principles.  Booh  I.  (2)  Posit- 
ing of  the  apories  or  the  philosophical  preliminary  questions, 


116 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


III.  (3)  The  principle  of  contradiction,  IV.  (4)  DefinitionSj 
V.  (5)  Examination  of  the  conception  of  essence  (ovo-lu)  and 
conceivable  being  (the  tl  rjv  ilvai)  or  the  conception  of  matter 
(vXr]),  form  (elSos),  and  that  which  arises  from  the  connection 
of  these  two  (oaVoAov),  VII.  VIII.  (6)  Potentiality  and  ac- 
tuality, IX.  (7)  The  Divine  Spirit  moving  all,  but  itself  un- 
moved, XII.  (8)  To  these  we  may  add  the  polemic  against  the 
Platonic  doctrine  of  ideas  and  numbers,  which  runs  through  the 
whole  Metaphysics,  but  is  especially  carried  out  in  Books  XIII. 
and  XIV. 

(1)  The  Aristotelian  Criticism  of  the  Platonic  Doctrine  of 
Ideas. — In  Aristotle's  antagonism  to  the  Platonic  doctrine  of 
ideas,  we  must  seek  for  the  specific  difference  between  the  two 
systems,  a  difference  of  which  Aristotle  avails  himself  of  every 
opportunity  (especially  3Ietaph.  I.  and  XIII.)  to  express.  Plato 
had  beheld  every  thing  actual  in  the  idea,  but  the  idea  was  to  him 
a  rigid  truth,  which  had  not  yet  become  interwoven  with  the  life 
and  the  movement  of  existence.  Such  a  view,  however,  had  this 
difficulty,  the  idea,  however  little  Plato  would  have  it  so,  found 
standing  over  against  it  in  independent  being  the  phenomenal 
world,  while  it  furnished  no  principle  on  which  the  being  of  the 
phenomenal  world  could  be  affirmed.  This  Aristotle  recognizes 
and  charges  upon  Plato,  that  his  ideas  were  only  "  immortalized 
things  of  sense,"  out  of  which  the  being  and  becoming  of  the 
sensible  could  not  be  explained.  In  order  to  avoid  this  conse- 
quence, he  himself  makes  out  an  original  reference  of  mind  to 
phenomenon,  affirming  that  the  relation  of  the  two  is,  that  of  the 
actual  to  the  possible,  or  that  of  form  to  matter,  and  considering 
,also  mind  as  the  absolute  actuality  of  matter,  and  matter,  as  the 
potentially  mind.  His  argument  against  the  Platonic  doctrine 
of  ideas,  Aristotle  makes  out  in  the  following  way. 

Passing  by  now  the  fact  that  Plato  has  furnished  no  satisfac- 
tory proof  for  the  objective  and  independent  reality  of  ideas,  and 
that  his  theory  is  without  vindication,  we  may  affirm  in  the  first 
place  that  it  is  wholly  unfruitful,  since  it  possesses  no  ground  of 
explanation  for  being.  The  ideas  have  no  proper  and  independent 


ARISTOTLE. 


117 


content.  To  see  this  -we  need  only  refer  to  the  manner  in  which 
Plato  introduced  them.  In  order  to  make  science  possible  he  had 
posited  certain  substances  independent  of  the  sensible,  and  unin- 
fluenced by  its  changes.  But  to  serve  such  a  purpose,  there  was 
offered  to  him  nothing  other  than  this  individual  thing  of  sense. 
Hence  he  gave  to  this  individual  a  universal  form,  which  was 
with  him  the  idea.  From  this  it  resulted,  that  his  ideas  can 
hardly  be  separated  from  the  sensible  and  individual  objects  which 
participate  in  them.  The  ideal  duality  and  the  empirical  duality 
is  one  and  the  same  content.  The  truth  of  this  we  can  readily 
see,  whenever  we  gain  from  the  adherents  to  the  doctrine  of  ideas 
a  definite  statement  respecting  the  peculiar  character  of  their  un- 
changeable substances,  in  comparison  with  the  sensible  and  indi- 
vidual things  which  participate  in  them.  The  only  difference 
between  the  two  consists  in  appending  -per  se  to  the  names  ex- 
pressing the  respective  ideas  ;  thus,  while  the  individual  things  are 
e.  g.  man,  horse,  etc.,  the  ideas  are  man  per  se,  horse  per  se,  etc. 
There  is  only  this  formal  change  for  the  doctrine  of  ideas  to  rest 
upon ;  the  finite  content  is  not  removed,  but  is  only  character- 
ized as  perpetual.  This  objection,  that  in  the  doctrine  of  ideas 
we  have  in  reality  only  the  sensible  posited  as  a  not-sensible,  and 
endowed  with  the  predicate  of  immutability,  Aristotle  urges  as  above 
remarked  when  he  calls  the  ideas  "  immortalized  things  of  sense," 
not  as  though  they  were  actually  something  sensible  and  spacial, 
but  because  in  them  the  sensible  individual  loses  at  once  its  indi- 
viduality, and  becomes  a  universal.  He  compares  them  in  this 
respect  with  the  gods  of  the  popular  and  anthropomorphical  reli- 
gion ;  as  these  are  nothing  but  deified  men,  so  the  ideas  are  only 
things  of  nature  endowed  with  a  supernatural  potency,  a  sensible 
exalted  to  a  not-sensible.  This  identity  between  the  ideas  and 
their  respective  individual  things  amounts  moreover  to  this,  that 
the  introduction  of  ideas  doubles  the  objects  to  be  known  in  a 
burdensome  manner,  and  without  any  good  results.  Why  set  up 
the  same  thing  over  again  ?  Why  besides  the  sensible  twofold - 
ness  and  threefoldness,  affirm  a  twofoldness  and  threefoldness  in 
the  idea  ?    The  adherents  of  the  doctrine  of  ideas,  when  they 


118 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


posit  an  idea  for  every  class  of  natural  things,  and  through  this 
theory  set  up  two  equivalent  theories  of  sensible  and  not-sensible 
substances,  seem  therefore  to  Aristotle  like  men  who  think  they 
can  reckon  better  with  many  numbers  than  with  few,  and  who 
therefore  go  to  multiplying  their  numbers  before  they  begin  their 
reckoning.    Therefore  again  the  doctrine  of  ideas  is  a  tautology, 
and  wholly  unfruitful  of  the  explanation  of  being.      The  ideas 
give  no  aid  to  the  knowledge  of  the  individual  things  participa- 
ting in  them,  since  the  ideas  are  not  immanent  in  these  things, 
but  separate  from  them."    Equally  unfruitful  are  the  ideas  when 
considered  in  reference  to  the  arising  and  departing  of  the  things 
of  sense.    They  contain  no  principle  of  becoming,  of  movement. 
There  is  in  them  no  causality  which  might  bring  out  the  event,  or 
explain  the  event  when  it  had  actually  happened.  Themselves 
without  motion  and  process,  if  they  had  any  effect,  it  could  only 
be  that  of  perfect  repose.    True,  Plato  affirms  in  his  Phaedon 
that  the  ideas  are  causes  both  of  being  and  becoming,  but  in  spite 
of  the  ideas,  nothing  ever  hecomes  without  a  moving;  the  ideas, 
by  their  separation  from  the  becoming,  have  no  such  capacity  to 
move.    This  indifferent  relation  of  ideas  to  the  actual  becoming, 
Aristotle  brings  under  the "  categories,  potentiality  and  actuality, 
and  farther  says  that  the  ideas  are  only  potential,  they  are  only 
bare  possibility  and  essentiality  because  they  are  wanting  in  ac- 
tuality.— The  inner  contradiction  of  the  doctrine  of  ideas  is  in 
brief  this,  viz.,  that  it  posits  an  individual  immediately  as  a  uni- 
versal, and  at  the  same  time  pronounces  the  universal,  the  species, 
as  numerically  an  individual,  and  also  that  the  ideas  are  set  up  on 
the  one  side  as  separate  individual  substances,  and  on  the  other 
side  as  participant,  and  therefore  as  universal.  Although  the  ideas 
as  the  original  conceptions  of  species  are  a  universal,  which  arise 
when  being  is  fixed  in  existence,  and  the  one  brought  out  in  the 
many,  and  the  abiding  is  given  a  place  in  the  changeable,  yet  can 
they  not  be  defined  as  they  should  be  according  to  the  Platonic 
notion,  that  they  are  individual  sujbstances,  for  there  can  be  neither 
definition  nor  derivation  of  an  absolute  individual,  since  even  the 
word  (and  only  in  words  is  a  definition  possible)  is  in  its  nature  a 


ARISTOTLE. 


119 


universal,  and  belongs  also  to  other  objects,  consequently,  every 
predicate  in  which  I  attempt  to  determine  an  individual  thing 
cannot  belong  exclusively  to  that  thing.  The  adherents  of  the 
doctrine  of  ideas,  are  therefore  not  at  all  in  a  condition  to  give  an 
idea  a  conceivable  termination ;  their  ideas  are  indefinable. — In 
general,  Plato  has  left  the  relation  of  the  individual  objects  to 
ideas  very  obscure.  He  calls  the  ideas  archetypes,  and  allows 
that  the  objects  may  participate  in  them ;  yet  are  these  only 
poetical  metaphors.  How  shall  we  represent  to  ourselves  this 
"  participation,"  this  copying  of  the  original  archetype  ?  We 
seek  in  vain  for  more  accurate  explanations  of  this  in  Plato.  It 
is  impossible  to  conceive  how  and  why  matter  participates  in  the 
ideas.  In  order  to  explain  this,  we  must  add  to  the  ideas  a  still 
higher  and  wider  principle,  which  contains  the  cause  for  this  "  par- 
ticipation" of  objects,  for  without  a  moving  principle  we  find  no 
ground  for  "participation."  Alike  above  the  idea  {e.  g.  the  idea 
of  man),  and  the  phenomenon  {e.  g.  the  individual  man),  there 
must  stand  a  third  common  to  both,  and  in  which  the  two  were 
united,  i.  e.  as  Aristotle  was  in  the  habit  of  expressing  this  objec- 
tion, the  doctrine  of  ideas  leads  to  the  adoption  of  a  "  third  man." 
The  result  of  this  Aristotelian  criticism  is  the  immanence  of  the 
universal  in  the  individual.  The  method  of  Socrates  in  trying  to 
find  the  universal  as  the  essence  of  the  individual,  and  to  give  de- 
finitions according  to  conception,  was  as  correct  (for  no  science  is 
possible  without  the  universal)  as  the  theory  of  Plato  in  exalting 
these  universal  conceptions  to  an  independent  subsistence  as  real 
individual  substances,  was  erroneous.  Nothing  universal,  nothing 
which  is  a  kind  or  a  species,  exists  besides  and  separate  from  the 
individual ;  a  thing  and  its  conception  cannot  be  separated  from 
each  other.  With  these  principles  Aristotle  hardly  deviated  from 
Plato's  fundamental  idea  that  the  universal  is  the  only  true  being, 
and  the  essence  of  individual  things ;  it  may  rather  be  said  that 
he  has  freed  this  idea  from  its  original  abstraction,  and  given  it  a 
more  profound  mediation  with  the  phenomenal  world.  Notwith- 
standing his  apparent  contradiction  to  Plato,  the  fundamental 
position  of  Aristotle  is  the  same  as  that  of  his  master,  viz.,  that 


120 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


the  essence  of  a  thing  (to  rt  eVrtv,  to  ri  rjv  dvai)  is  known  and  rep- 
resented in  the  conception  ;  Aristotle  however  recognizes  the  uni- 
versal, the  conception  to  be  as  little  separated  from  the  determined 
phenomenon  as  form  from  matter,  and  essence  or  substance  (o^o-ta) 
in  its  most  proper  sense  is,  according  to  him,  only  that  which  can- 
not be  predicated  of  another,  though  of  this  other  every  remain- 
ing thing  may  be  predicated ;  it  is  that  which  is  a  this  (toSc  ti), 
the  individual  thing  and  not  a  universal. 

(2.)  The  four  Aristotelian  principles  or  causes^  and  the 
relation  of  form  and  matter. — From  the  criticism  of  the 
Platonic  doctrine  of  ideas  arose  directly  the  groundwork  of 
the  Aristotelian  system,  the  determinations  of  matter  (vXrD^ 
and  form  (etSos).  Aristotle  enumerates  four  metaphysical 
principles  or  causes :  matter,  form,  moving  cause,  and  end.  In 
a  house,  for  instance,  the  matter  is  the  wood,  the  form  is  the 
conception  of  the  house,  the  moving  cause  is  the  builder, 
and  the  end  is  the  actual  house.  These  four  determinations 
of  all  being  resolve  themselves  upon  a  closer  scrutiny  into 
the  fundamental  antithesis  of  matter  and  form.  The  concep- 
tion of  the  moving  cause  is  involved  with  the  two  other  ideal 
principles  of  form  and  of  end.  The  moving  cause  is  that  which 
has  secured  the  transition  of  the  incomplete  actuality  or  poten- 
tiality to  the  complete  actuality,  or  induces  the  becoming  of  mat- 
ter to  form.  But  in  every  movement  of  the  incomplete  to  the 
complete,  the  latter  antedates  in  conception  this  movement,  and 
is  its  motive.  The  moving  cause  of  matter  is  therefore  form. 
So  is  man  the  moving  and  producing  cause  of  man ;  the  form  of 
the  statue  in  the  understanding  of  the  artist  is  the  cause  of  the 
movement  by  which  the  statue  is  produced ;  health  must  be  in  the 
thought  of  the  physician  before  it  can  become  the  moving  cause 
of  convalescence  ;  so  in  a  certain  degree  is  medicine,  health,  and 
the  art  of  building  the  form  of  the  house.  But  in  the  same  way, 
the  moving  or  first  cause  is  also  identical  with  the  final  cause  or 
end,  for  the  end  is  the  motive  for  all  becoming  and  movement. 
The  moving  cause  of  the  house  is  the  builder,  but  the  moving 
cause  of  the  builder  is  the  end  to  be  attained,  i.  e.  the  house. 


ARISTOTLE. 


121 


From  such  examples  as  these  it  is  seen  that  the  determinations 
of  form  and  end  may  be  considered  under  one,  in  so  far  as  both 
are  united  in  the  conception  of  actuality  (ei/epyeta),  for  the  end 
of  every  thing  is  its  completed  being,  its  conception  or  its  form, 
the  bringing  out  into  complete  actuality  that  which  was  poten- 
tially contained  in  it.  The  end  of  the  hand  is  its  conception,  the 
end  of  the  seed  is  the  tree,  which  is  at  the  same  time  the  essence 
of  the  seed.  The  only  fundamental  determinations,  therefore, 
which  cannot  be  wholly  resolved  into  each  other,  are  matter  and 
form. 

Matter  when  abstracted  from  form  in  thought,  Aristotle  re- 
garded as  that  which  was  entirely  without  predicate,  determina- 
tion and  distinction.  It  is  that  abiding  thing  which  lies  at  the 
basis  of  all  becoming ;  but  which  in  its  own  being  is  different 
from  every  thing  which  has  become.  It  is  capable  of  the  widest 
diversity  of  forms,  but  is  itself  without  determinate  form ;  it  is 
every  thing  in  possibility,  but  nothing  in  actuality.  There  is  a 
first  matter  which  lies  at  the  basis  of  every  determinate  thing, 
precisely  as  the  wood  is  related  to  the  bench  and  the  marble  to 
the  statue.  With  this  conception  of  matter  Aristotle  prides  him- 
self upon  having  conquered  the  difficulty  so  frequently  urged  of 
explaining  the  possibility  that  any  thing  can  become,  since  being 
can  neither  come  out  of  being  nor  out  of  not-being.  For  it  is 
not  out  of  not-being  absolutely,  but  only  out  of  that  which  as  to 
actuality  is  not-being,  but  which  potentially  is  being,  that  any 
thing  becomes.  Possible  or  potential  being  is  no  more  not-being 
than  actuality.  Every  existing  object  of  nature  is  hence  but  a 
potential  thing  which  has  become  actualized.  Matter  is  thus  a 
far  more  positive  substratum  with  Aristotle  than  with  Plato,  who 
had  treated  it  as  absolutely  not-being.  From  this  is  clearly  seen 
how  Aristotle  could  apprehend  matter  in  opposition  to  form  as 
something  positively  negative  and  antithetic  to  the  form,  and  as 
its  positive  denial  (o-repT^o-ts). 

As  matter  coalesces  with  potentiality,  so  does  form  coincide 
with  actuality.  It  is  that  which  makes  a  distinguishable  and 
actual  object,  a  this  (roSe  n)  out  of  the  undistinguished  and  in- 
6 


122 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


determinate  matter ;  it  is  the  peculiar  virtue,  the  completed  ac- 
tivity, the  soul  of  every  thing.  That  which  Aristotle  calls  form, 
therefore,  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  what  we  perhaps  may  call 
shape ;  a  hand  severed  from  the  arm,  for  instance,  has  still  the 
outward  shape  of  a  hand,  but  according  to  the  Aristotelian  appre- 
hension, it  is  only  a  hand  now  as  to  matter  and  not  as  to  form  :  an 
actual  hand,  a  hand  as  to  form,  is  only  that  which  can  do  the 
proper  work  of  a  hand.  Pure  form  is  that  which,  in  truth,  is 
without  matter  (to  tL  rjv  dvaC) ;  or,  in  other  words,  the  conception 
of  being,  the  pure  conception.  But  such  pure  form  does  not 
exist  in  the  realm  of  determined  being  ;  every  determined  being, 
every  individual  substance  {ova la) ^  every  thing  which  is  a  this,  is 
rather  a  totality  of  matter  and  form,  a  (a-vvoXov).  It  is,  there- 
fore, owing  to  matter,  that  being  is  not  pure  form  and  pure  con- 
ception ;  matter  is  the  ground  of  the  becoming,  the  manifold,  and 
the  accidental ;  and  it  is  this,  also,  which  gives  to  science  its 
limits.  For  in  precisely  the  measure  in  which  the  individual 
thing  bears  in  itself  a  material  element  is  it  uncognizable.  From 
what  has  been  said,  it  follows  that  the  opposition  between  matter 
and  form  is  a  variable  one,  that  being  matter  in  one  respect 
which  in  another  is  form  ;  building-wood,  e.  g.  is  matter  in  rela- 
tion to  the  completed  house,  but  in  relation  to  the  unhewn  tree  it 
is  form ;  the  soul  in  respect  to  the  body  is  form,  but  in  respect  to 
the  reason,  which  is  the  form  of  form  (eTSo?  ctSous)  is  it  matter. 
On  this  stand-point  the  totality  of  all  existence  may  be  repre- 
sented as  a  ladder,  whose  lowest  step  is  a  prime  matter  (-Trpwrr] 
vXr]),  which  is  not  at  all  form,  and  whose  highest  step  is  an  ultimate 
form  which  is  not  at  all  matter,  but  is  pure  form  (the  absolute, 
divine  spirit).  That  which  stands  between  these  two  points  is  in 
one  respect  matter,  and  in  another  respect  form,  i.  e.  the  former 
is  ever  translating  itself  into  the  latter.  This  position,  which 
lies  at  the  basis  of  the  Aristotelian  view  of  nature,  is  attained 
analytically  through  the  observation  that  all  nature  exhibits  the 
perpetual  and  progressive  transition  of  matter  into  form,  and 
shows  the  exhaustless  and  original  ground  of  things  as  it  comes 
to  view  in  ever  ascending  ideal  formations.    That  all  matter 


ARISTOTLE. 


123 


fihould  become  form,  and  all  that  is  potential  should  be  actual, 
and  all  that  is  should  be  known,  is  doubtless  the  demand  of  the 
reason  and  the  end  of  all  becoming ;  yet  is  this  actually  imprac- 
ticable, since  Aristotle  expressly  affirms  that  matter  as  the  anti- 
thesis, or  denial  of  form,  can  never  become  wholly  actualized,  and 
therefore  can  never  be  perfectly  known.  The  Aristotelian  sys- 
tem ends  thus  like  its  predecessors,  in  the  unsubdued  dualism  of 
matter  and  form. 

(3.)  PotentialUy  and  Actuality  (Swa/xts  and  cvepyeia). — The 
relation  of  matter  to  form,  logically  apprehended,  is  but  the 
relation  of  potentiality  to  actuality.  These  terms,  which  Aris- 
totle first  employed  according  to  their  philosophical  signifi- 
cance, are  very  characteristic  for  his  system.  We  have  in  the 
movement  of  potential  being  to  actual  being  the  explicit  concep- 
tion of  becoming,  and  in  the  four  principles  we  have  a  distribu- 
tion of  this  conception  in  its  parts.  The  Aristotelian  system  is 
consequently  a  system  of  the  becoming,  in  which  the  Heraclitic 
principle  appears  again  in  a  richer  and  profounder  apprehension, 
as  that  of  the  Eleatics  had  done  with  Plato.  Aristotle  in  this 
has  made  no  insignificant  step  towards  the  subjection  of  the  Pla- 
tonic dualism.  If  matter  is  the  possibility  of  form,  or  reason 
becoming,  then  is  the  opposition  between  the  idea  and  the  phe- 
nomenal world  potentially  overcome,  at  least  in  principle,  since 
there  is  one  being  which  appears  both  in  matter  and  form  only 
in  different  stages  of  development.  The  relation  of  the  potential 
to  the  actual  Aristotle  exhibits  by  the  relation  of  the  unfinished 
to  the  finished  work,  of  the  unemployed  carpenter  to  the  one  at 
work  upon  his  building,  of  the  individual  asleep  to  him  awake. 
Potentially  the  seed-corn  is  the  tree,  but  the  grown  up  tree  is 
it  actually ;  the  potential  philosopher  is  he  who  is  not  at  this 
moment  in  a  philosophizing  condition ;  even  before  the  battle  the 
better  general  is  the  potential  conqueror ;  potentially  is  space  in- 
finitely divisible ;  in  fact  every  thing  is  potentially  which  possesses 
a  principle  of  motion,  of  development,  or  of  change,  and  which,  if 
unhindered  by  any  thing  external,  will  be  of  itself.  Actuality  or 
entelechy  on  the  other  hand  indicates  the  perfect  act,  the  end  as 


124 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


gained,  the  completely  actual  (the  grown-up  tree  e.  g.  is  the  en- 
telechy  of  the  seed-corn),  that  activity  in  which  the  act  and  the 
completeness  of  the  act  fall  together,  e.  g.  to  see,  to  think  where 
he  sees  and  he  has  seen,  he  thinks  and  he  has  thought  (the  acting 
and  the  completeness  of  the  act)  are  one  and  the  same,  while  in 
those  activities  which  involve  a  becoming,  e.  g.  to  learn,  to  go,  to 
become  well,  the  two  are  separated.  In  this  apprehension  of  form 
(or  idea)  as  actuality  or  entelechy,  i.  e.  in  joining  it  with  the 
movement  of  the  becoming,  is  found  the  chief  antagonism  of  the 
Aristotelian  and  Platonic  systems.  Plato  considers  the  idea  as 
being  at  rest,  and  consisting  for  itself,  in  opposition  to  the  becom- 
ing and  to  motion;  but  with  Aristotle  the  idea  is  the  eternal 
product  of  the  becoming,  it  is  an  eternal  energy,  i.  e.  an  activity 
in  complete  actuality,  it  is  not  perfect  being,  but  is  being  produced 
in  every  moment  and  eternally,  through  the  movement  of  the 
potential  to  its  actual  end. 

(4.)  The  Absolute,  Divine  Spi^^it. — Aristotle  has  sought  to 
establish  from  a  number  of  sides,  the  conception  of  the  absolute 
spirit,  or  as  he  calls  it,  the  first  mover,  and  especially  by  joining  it 
to  the  relation  of  potentiality  and  actuality. 

(a.)  The  Cosmological  Form. — The  actual  is  ever  antecedent 
to  the  potential  not  only  in  conception  (for  I  can  speak  of  poten- 
tiality only  in  reference  to  some  activity)  but  also  in  time,  for  the 
acting  becomes  actual  only  through  an  acting ;  the  uneducated 
becomes  educated  through  the  educated,  and  this  leads  to  the 
claim  of  a  first  mover  which  shall  be  pure  activity.  Or,  again, 
it  is  only  possible  that  there  should  be  motion,  becoming,  or  a 
chain  of  causes,  except  as  a  principle  of  motion,  a  mover  exists. 
But  this  principle  of  motion  must  be  one  whose  essence  is  actual- 
ity, since  that  which  only  exists  in  possibility  cannot  alone  become 
actual,  and  therefore  cannot  be  a  principle  of  motion.  All  becom- 
ing postulates  with  itself  that  which  is  eternal  and  which  has  not 
become,  that  which  itself  unmoved  is  a  principle  of  motion,  a  first 
mover. 

[h.)  The  Ontological  Form. — In  the  same  way  it  follows  from 
the  conception  of  potentiality,  that  the  eternal  and  necessary 


ARISTOTLE. 


125 


being  cannot  be  potential.  For  that  which  potentially  is,  may 
just  as  well  either  be  or  not  be ;  but  that  which  possibly  is  not, 
is  temporal  and  not  eternal.  Nothing  therefore  which  is  abso- 
lutely permanent,  is  potential,  but  only  actual.  Or,  again,  if 
potentiality  be  the  first,  then  can  there  be  no  possible  existence, 
but  this  contradicts  the  conception  of  the  absolute  or  that  which 
it  is  impossible  should  not  be. 

(c.)  The  Moral  Form. — Potentiality  always  involves  a 
possibility  to  the  most  opposite.  He  who  has  the  capacity  to 
be  well,  has  also  the  capacity  to  be  sick,  but  actually  no  man 
is  at  the  same  time  both  sick  and  well.  Therefore  actuality 
is  better  than  potentiality,  and  only  it  can  belong  to  the  eter- 
nal. 

{d.)  So  far  as  the  relation  of  potentiality  and  actuality  is 
identical  with  the  relation  of  matter  and  form,  we  may  apprehend 
in  the  following  way  these  arguments  for  the  existence  of  a  being 
which  is  pure  actuality.  The  supposition  of  an  absolute  matter 
without  form  (the  Trpwrr;  vXrj)  involves  also  the  supposition  of  an 
absolute  form  without  matter  (a  irpoiTov  etSos).  And  since  the 
conception  of  form  resolves  itself  into  the  three  determinations, 
of  the  moving,  the  conceivable,  and  the  final  cause,  so  is  the  eter- 
nal one  the  absolute  principle  of  motion  (the  first  mover  TipujTov 
Xivovv),  the  absolute  conception  or  pure  intelligible  (the  pure  rt  fjv 
eti/at),  and  the  absolute  end. 

All  the  other  predicates  of  the  first  mover  or  the  highest  prin- 
ciple of  the  world,  follow  from  these  premises  with  logical  necessity. 
Unity  belongs  to  him,  since  the  ground  of  the  manifoldness  of 
Deing  lies  in  the  matter  and  he  has  no  participation  in  matter ; 
he  is  immovable  and  abiding  ever  the  same,  since  otherwise  he 
could  not  be  the  absolute  mover  and  the  cause  of  all  becoming  ; 
he  is  life  as  active  self-end  and  actuality ;  he  is  at  the  same  time 
intelligible  and  intelligence,  because  he  is  absolutely  immaterial 
and  free  from  nature;  he  is  active,  i.  e.  thinking  intelligence, 
because  his  essence  is  pure  actuality ;  he  is  self-contemplating  in- 
telligence, because  the  divine  thought  cannot  attain  its  actuality 
in  any  thing  extrinsic,  and  because  if  it  were  the  thought  of  any 


126 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


thing  other  than  itself,  this  would  make  it  depend  upon  some 
potential  existence  for  its  actualization.  Hence  the  famed  Aris- 
totelian definition  of  the  absolute  that  it  is  the  thought  of  thought 
(v6r](TLs  voi^o-etos),  the  personal  unity  of  the  thinking  and  the 
thought,  of  the  knowing  and  the  known,  the  absolute  subject- 
object.  In  the  Metaphysics  (XII.  1.)  we  have  a  statement  in 
order  of  these  attributes  of  the  Divine  Spirit,  and  an  almost 
devout  sketch  of  the  eternally  blessed  Deity,  knowing  himself  in 
his  eternal  tranquillity  as  the  absolute  truth,  satisfied  with  himself, 
and  wanting  neither  in  activity  nor  in  any  virtue. 

As  would  appear  from  this  statement,  Aristotle  has  never  fully 
developed  the  idea  of  his  absolute  spirit,  and  still  less  has  he  har- 
monized it  with  the  fundamental  principles  and  demands  of  his 
philosophy,  although  many  consequences  of  his  system  would 
seem  to  drive  him  to  this,  and  numerous  principles  which  he  has 
laid  down  would  seem  to  prepare  the  way  for  it.  This  idea  is 
unexpectedly  introduced  in  the  twelfth  book  of  the  Metaphysics 
simply  as  an  assertion,  without  being  farther  and  inductively 
substantiated.  It  is  at  once  attended  with  important  difficulties. 
We  do  not  see  why  the  ultimate  ground  of  motion  or  the  absolute 
spirit  must  be  conceived  as  a  personal  being ;  we  do  not  see  how 
any  thing  can  be  a  moving  cause  and  yet  itself  unmoved ;  how  it 
can  be  the  origin  of  all  becoming,  that  is  of  the  departing  and 
arising,  and  itself  remain  a  changeless  energy,  a  principle  of  motion 
with  no  potentiality  to  be  moved,  for  the  moving  thing  must  stand 
in  a  relation  of  passive  and  active  with  the  thing  moved.  More- 
over, Aristotle,  as  would  follow  from  these  contradictory  deter- 
minations, has  never  thoroughly  and  consistently  determined  the 
relation  between  God  and  the  world.  He  has  considered  the  ab- 
solute spirit  only  as  contemplative  and  theoretical  reason,  from 
whom  all  action  must  be  excluded  because  he  is  perfect  end  in 
himself,  but  every  action  presupposes  an  end  not  yet  perfected ; 
we  have  thus  no  true  motive  for  his  activity  in  reference  to  the 
world.  He  cannot  be  truly  called  the  first  mover  in  his  theoretical 
relation  alone,  and  since  he  is  in  his  essence  extra-mundane  and 
unmoved,  he  cannot  once  permeate  the  life  of  the  world  with  his 


ARISTOTLE, 


127 


activity ;  and  since  also  matter  on  one  side  never  rises  wholly  to 
form,  we  have,  therefore,  here  again  the  unreconciled  dualism 
between  the  Divine  spirit  and  the  unmistakable  reality  of  matter. 
Many  of  the  arguments  which  Aristotle  brings  against  the  gods  of 
Anaxagoras  may  be  urged  against  his  own  theory. 

IV.  The  Aristotelian  Physics. — The  Aristotelian  Physics, 
which  embraces  the  greater  portion  of  his  writing's,  follows 
the  becoming  and  the  building  up  of  matter  into  form,  the 
course  through  which  nature  as  a  living  being  progresses  in 
order  to  become  individual  soul.  All  becoming  has  an  end ; 
but  end  is  form,  and  the  absolute  form  is  spirit.  With  per- 
fect consistency,  therefore,  Aristotle  regards  the  human  indi- 
vidual of  the  male  sex  as  the  end  and  the  centre  of  earthly 
nature  in  its  realized  form.  All  else  beneath  the  moon  is,  as  it 
were,  an  unsuccessful  attempt  of  nature  to  produce  the  male  hu- 
man, a  superfluity  which  arises  from  the  impotence  of  nature  to 
subdue  the  whole  of  matter  and  bring  it  into  form.  Every  thing 
which  does  not  gain  the  universal  end  of  nature  must  be  regarded 
as  incomplete,  and  is  properly  an  exception  or  abortion.  For  in- 
stance, he  calls  it  an  abortion  when  a  child  does  not  resemble  its 
father ;  and  the  female  child  he  looks  upon  as  an  abortion  in  a 
less  degree,  which  he  accounts  for  by  the  insufficient  energy  of 
the  male  as  the  forming  principle.  In  general,  Aristotle  regards 
the  female  as  imperfect  in  comparison  with  the  male,  an  imper- 
fection which  belongs  in  a  higher  degree  to  all  animals  except 
man.  If  nature  did  her  work  with  perfect  consciousness,  then 
were  all  these  mistakes,  these  incomplete  and  improper  forma- 
tions inexplicable,  but  she  is  an  artist  working  only  after  an  un- 
conscious impulse,  and  does  not  complete  her  work  with  a  clear 
and  rational  insight. 

1,  The  universal  conditions  of  all  natural  existence,  motion^ 
matter  J  space  and  time^  Aristotle  investigates  in  the  books  of 
Physics.  These  physical  conceptions  may,  moreover,  be  reduced 
to  the  metaphysical  notions  of  potentiality  and  actuality ;  motion 
is  accordingly  defined  as  the  activity  of  being  potentially,  and  is 
therefore  a  mean  between  the  merely  potential  entity  and  the 


128 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


perfectly  realized  activity; — space  is  tlie  possibility  of  motion 
and  possesses,  therefore,  potentially,  though  not  actively,  the  pro- 
perty of  infinite  divisibility ;  time  is  in  the  same  way  the  in- 
finitely divisible,  expressing  the  measure  of  motion  in  number, 
and  is  the  number  of  motion  according  to  before  and  after.  All 
three  are  infinite,  but  the  infinite  which  is  represented  in  them  is 
only  potentially  but  not  actually  a  whole  :  it  comprehends  nothing, 
but  is  itself  comprehended, — a  fact  mistaken  by  those  who  are 
accustomed  to  extol  the  infinite  as  though  it  comprehended  and 
held  every  thing  in  itself,  because  it  had  some  similarity  with  the 
whole. 

2.  From  his  conception  of  motion  Aristotle  derives  his  view 
of  the  collective  universe^  as  brought  out  in  his  books  De  Ccslo. 
The  most  perfect  motion  is  the  circular,  because  this  is  constant, 
uniform,  and  ever  returning  into  itself.  The  world  as  a  whole  is 
therefore  conditioned  by  the  circular  motion,  and  being  a  whole 
complete  in  itself,  it  has  a  spherical  form.  But  because  the  mo- 
tion which  returns  into  itself  is  better  than  every  other,  it  fol- 
lows, from  the  same  ground,  that  in  this  spherical  universe  the 
better  sphere  will  be  in  the  circumference  where  the  circular 
motion  is  most  perfect,  and  the  inferior  one  will  arrange  itself 
around  the  centre  of  the  universal  sphere.  The  former  is  heaven, 
the  latter  is  earth,  and  between  the  two  stand  the  planetary 
spheres.  Heaven,  as  the  place  of  circular  motion,  and  the  scene 
of  unchangeable  order,  stands  nearest  the  first  moving  cause,  and 
is  under  its  immediate  influence ;  it  is  the  place  where  the  an- 
cients, guided  by  the  correct  tradition  of  a  lost  wisdom,  have 
placed  the  Divine  abode.  Its  parts,  the  fixed  stars,  are  passion- 
less and  eternal  essences,  which  have  attained  the  best  end,  which 
must  be  eternally  conceived  in  a  tireless  activity,  and  which, 
though  not  clearly  cognizable,  are  yet  much  more  divine  than 
man.  A  lower  sphere,  next  to  that  of  the  fixed  stars,  is  the 
sphere  of  the  planets,  among  which,  besides  the  five  known  to  the 
ancients,  he  reckons  the  sun  and  the  moon.  This  sphere  stands 
a  little  removed  from  the  greatest  perfection  :  instead  of  moving 
directly  from  right  to  left,  as  do  the  fixed  stars,  the  planets  move 


ARISTOTLE. 


129 


in  contrary  directions  and  in  oblique  orbits  ;  they  serve  the  fixed 
stars,  and  are  ruled  by  their  motion.  Lastly,  the  earth  is  in  the 
centre  of  the  universe,  farthest  removed  from  the  first  mover,  and 
hence  partaking  in  the  smallest  degree  of  the  Divine.  There  are 
thus  three  kinds  of  being,  exhibiting  three  stages  of  perfection,  and 
necessary  for  the  explanation  of  nature  ;  first,  the  absolute  spirit 
or  God,  an  immaterial  being,  who,  himself  unmoved,  produces 
motion ;  second,  the  super-terrestrial  region  of  the  heavens,  a 
being  which  is  moved  and  which  moves,  and  which,  though  not 
without  matter,  is  eternal  and  unchangeable,  and  possesses  ever  a 
circular  motion ;  and,  lastly,  in  the  lowest  course  this  earth,  a 
changeful  being,  which  has  only  to  play  the  passive  part  of  being 
moved. 

3.  Nature  in  a  strict  sense,  the  scene  of  elemental  working 
represents  to  us  a  constant  and  progressive  transition  of  the  ele- 
mentary to  the  vegetative,  and  of  the  vegetative  to  the  animal 
world.  The  lowest  step  is  occupied  by  the  inanimate  bodies  of 
nature,  which  are  simple  products  of  the  elements  mingling  them- 
selves together,  and  have  their  entelechy  only  in  the  determinate 
combinations  of  these  elements,  but  whose  energy  consists  only 
in  striving  after  a  fitting  place  in  the  universe,  and  in  resting 
there  so  far  as  they  reach  it  unhindered.  But  now  such  a  mere 
external  entelechy  is  not  possessed  by  the  living  bodies  ;  within 
them  dwells  a  motion  as  organizing  principle  by  which  they  attain 
to  actuality,  and  which  as  a  preserving  activity  develops  in  them 
towards  a  perfected  organization, — in  a  word  they  have  a  soul,  for 
a  soul  is  the  entelechy  of  an  organic  body.  In  plants  we  find  the 
soul  working  only  as  persevering  and  nourishing  energy :  the 
plant  has  no  other  function  than  to  nourish  itself  and  to  propagate 
its  kind  ;  among  animals — where  we  find  a  progress  according  to 
the  mode  of  their  reproduction — the  soul  appears  as  sensitive ; 
animals  have  sense,  and  are  capable  of  locomotion ;  lastly,  the 
human  soul  is  at  the  same  time  nutritive,  sensitive,  and  cog- 
nitive. 

4.  Man,  as  the  end  of  all  nature,  embraces  in  himself  the 
different  steps  of  develonment  in  which  the  life  of  nature  is  ex- 

6* 


130 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


hibited.  The  division  of  the  faculties  of  the  soul  must  thereforo 
be  necessarily  regulated,  according  to  the  division  of  living  crea- 
tures. As  the  nutritive  faculty  is  alone  the  property  of  vegeta- 
bles, and  sensation,  of  animals,  while  to  the  more  perfect  animals 
locomotion  also  belongs,  so  are  these  three  activities  also  devel- 
opment steps  of  the  human  soul,  the  antecedent  being  the  neces- 
sary condition  of,  and  presupposed  in  time  by,  the  subsequent, 
while  the  soul  itself  is  nothing  other  than  the  union  of  these  dif- 
ferent activities  of  an  organic  body  in  one  common  end,  as  the 
entelechy  of  the  organic  body.  The  fourth  step,  thought  or  rea- 
son, which,  added  to  the  three  others,  constitutes  the  peculiarity 
of  the  human  soul,  forms  alone  an  exception  from  the  general 
law.  It  is  not  a  simple  product  of  the  lower  faculties  of  the  soul, 
it  does  not  stand  related  to  them  simply  as  a  higher  stage  of  de- 
velopment, nor  simply  as  the  soul  to  the  body,  as  the  end  to  the 
instrument,  as  actuality  to  possibility,  as  form  to  matter.  But  as 
pure  intellectual  activity,  it  completes  itself  without  any  media- 
tion of  a  bodily  organ ;  as  the  reason  comes  into  the  body  from 
without,  so  is  it  separable  from  the  body,  and  therefore  has  it  no 
inner  connection  with  the  bodily  functions,  but  is  something 
wholly  foreign  in  nature.  True,  there  exists  a  connection  be- 
tween thought  and  sensation,  for  while  the  sensations  are  out- 
wardly divided,  according  to  the  different  objects  of  sense,  yet 
internally  they  meet  in  one  centre,  as  a  common  sense.  Here 
they  become  changed  into  images  and  representations,  which 
again  become  transmuted  into  thoughts,  and  so  it  might  seem  as 
if  thought  were  only  the  result  of  the  sensation,  as  if  intelligence 
were  passively  determined;  (here  we  might  notice  the  proposition 
falsely  ascribed  to  Aristotle  :  nihil  est  in  intelJectu  quod  no7i 
fuerit  in  sensu,  and  also  the  well-known  though  often  misunder- 
stood comparison  of  the  soul  with  an  unwritten  tablet,  which 
only  implies  this  much,  viz.,  that  as  the  unwritten  tablet  is  po- 
tentially but  not  actually  a  book,  so  does  knowledge  belong  po- 
tentially though  not  actually  to  the  human  reason ;  fundamentally 
and  radically  the  thought  may  have  in  itself  universal  concep- 
tions, e»£  far  as  it  has  the  capacity  to  form  them,  but  not  actually; 


ARISTOTLE. 


131 


nor  in  a  determined  or  developed  form).  But  this  passivity  pre- 
supposes rather  an  activity ;  for  if  the  thought  in  its  actuality,  in 
that  it  appears  as  knowledge,  hecomes  all  forms  and  therefore  all 
things,  then  must  the  thought  constitute  itself  that  which  it  be- 
comes, and  therefore  all  passively  determined  human  intelligence 
rests  on  an  originally  active  intelligence,  which  exists  as  self- 
actualizing  possibility  and  pure  actuality,  and  which,  as  such,  is 
wholly  independent  of  the  human  body,  and  has  not  its  entelechy 
in  it  but  in  itself,  and  is  not  therefore  participant  in  the  death  of 
the  body,  but  lives  on  as  universal  reason,  eternal  and  immortal. 
The  Aristotelian  dualism  here  again  appears.  Manifestly  this 
active  intelligence  stands  related  to  the  soul  as  God  to  nature. 
The  two  sides  possess  no  essential  relation  to  each  other.  As  the 
Divine  spirit  could  not  enter  the  life  of  the  world,  so  is  the  human 
spirit  unable  to  permeate  the  life  of  sense ;  although  it  is  deter- 
mined as  something  passionless  and  immaterial,  still  must  it  as 
soul  be  connected  with  matter,  and  although  it  is  pure  and  self- 
contemplative  form,  still  it  should  be  distinguished  from  the  Divine 
spirit  which  is  its  counterpart ;  the  want  of  a  satisfactory  media- 
tion on  the  side  of  the  human  and  on  that  of  the  Divine,  is  in 
these  respects  unmistakable. 

V.  The  Aristotelian  Ethics.  1.  Relation  or  Ethics  to 
Physics. — Aristotle,  guided  by  his  tendency  towards  the  natural, 
has  more  closely  connected  ethics  and  physics  than  either  of  his 
predecessors,  Socrates  or  Plato,  had  done.  While  Plato  found 
it  impossible  to  speak  of  the  good  in  man's  moral  condition,  dis- 
connected from  the  idea  of  the  good  in  itself,  Aristotle's  princi- 
pal object  is  to  determine  what  is  good  for  man  solely;  and  he 
supposes  that  the  good  in  itself,  the  idea  of  the  good,  in  no  way 
facilitates  the  knowledge  of  that  good,  which  alone  is  attainable 
in  practical  life.  It  is  only  the  latter,  the  moral  element  in  the 
life  of  men,  and  not  the  good  in  the  great  affairs  of  the  universe, 
with  which  ethics  has  to  do.  Aristotle  therefore  considers  the 
good  especially  in  its  relation  to  the  natural  condition  of  men, 
and  affirms  that  it  is  the  end  towards  which  nature  herself  tends. 
Instead  of  viewing  the  moral  element  as  something  purely  Intel- 


132 


A  UISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


lectual,  lie  rather  apprehends  it  as  only  the  bloom  of  the  physi- 
cal, which  here  becomes  spiritualized  and  ethical ;  instead  of 
making  virtue  to  be  knowledge,  he  treats  it  as  the  normal  perfec- 
tion of  the  natural  instinct.  That  man  is  hy  nature  a  political 
animal,  is  his  fundamental  proposition  for  the  doctrine  of  the 
state. 

From  this  connection  of  the  ethical  and  the  physical,  arose  the 
objections  which  Aristotle  urged  against  the  Socratic  conception 
of  virtue.  Socrates  had  looked  to  the  dialectical  exclusively  for 
the  ground  of  all  morality,  and  had  accordingly  made  virtue  and 
knowledge  one.  But  in  this,  said  Aristotle,  the  pathological  ele- 
ment which  is  associated  by  nature  with  every  moral  act,  is 
destroyed.  It  is  not  reason,  but  the  circumstances  and  natural 
bias  of  -the  soul  which  are  the  first  ground  of  virtue.  There  is  an 
instinct  in  the  soul  which  at  first  strives  unconsciously  after  the 
good,  which  is  only  subsequently  sought  with  the  full  moral  in- 
sight. Moral  virtue  arises  first  from  that  which  is  natural.  It 
is  on  this  ground,  also,  that  Aristotle  combats  the  notion  that 
virtue  may  be  learned.  It  is  not  through  the  perfection  of 
knowledge,  but  by  exercise  that  we  become  acquainted  with  the 
good.  It  is  by  a  practice  of  moral  acts  that  we  become  virtuous, 
just  as  by  a  practice  of  building  and  of  music  we  become  archi- 
tects and  musicians ;  for  the  habit  which  is  the  ground  of  moral 
constancy,  is  only  a  fruit  of  the  abundant  repetition  of  a  moral 
action.  Hence  it  is  that  originally  we  have  our  virtuous  or  our 
vicious  dispositions  in  our  power,  but  as  soon  as  they  are  formed 
either  to  virtue  or  to  vice,  we  are  no  longer  able  to  control  them. 
It  is  by  three  things,  therefore,  nature,  habit,  and  reason,  that  man 
becomes  good.  The  stand-point  of  Aristotle  is  in  these  respects 
directly  opposed  to  that  of  Socrates.  While  Socrates  regarded 
the  moral  and  the  natural  as  two  opposites,  and  made  the  moral 
conduct  to  be  the  consequent  of  a  rational  enlightenment,  Aris- 
totle treated  both  as  different  steps  of  development,  and  reversing 
the  order  of  Socrates,  made  the  rational  enlightenment  in  moral 
things  consequent  upon  the  moral  conduct. 

2.  The  Highest  Good. — Every  action  has  an  end  ;  but  since 


ARISTOTLE. 


133 


every  end  is  only  itself  a  means  to  some  other,  we  need  therefore 
something  after  which  we  can  strive  for  its  own  sake,  and  whicli 
is  a  good  absolutely,  or  a  best.  What  now  is  this  highest  good 
and  supreme  object  of  human  pursuit  ?  In  name,  at  least,  all  men 
are  agreed  upon  it,  and  call  it  happiness,  but  what  happiness  is,  is 
a  much  disputed  point.  If  asked  in  what  human  happiness  con- 
sists, the  first  characteristic  given  would  be  that  it  belongs  alone 
to  the  peculiar  being  of  man.  But  sensation  is  not  peculiar  to 
man,  for  he  shares  this  with  the  brute.  A  sensation  of  pleasure, 
therefore,  which  arises  when  some  desire  is  gratified,  may  be  the 
happiness  of  the  brute,  but  certainly  does  not  constitute  the  essen- 
tial of  human  happiness.  Human  happiness  must  express  the 
completeness  of  intelligent  existence,  and  because  intelligence  is 
essentially  activity,  therefore  the  happiness  of  man  cannot  consist 
in  any  merely  passive  condition,  but  must  express  a  completeness 
of  human  action.  Happiness  therefore  is  a  well-being,  which  is 
at  the  same  time  a  well-doing,  and  it  is  a  well-doing  which  satis- 
fies all  the  conditions  of  nature,  and  which  finds  the  highest  con- 
tentment or  well-being  in  an  unrestrained  energy.  Activity  and 
pleasure  are  thus  inseparably  bound  together  by  a  natural  bond, 
and  happiness  is  the  result  of  their  union  when  they  are  sustained 
through  a  perfect  life.  Hence  the  Aristotelian  definition  of  hap- 
piness.   It  is  a  perfect  practical  activity  in  a  perfect  life. 

Although  it  might  seem  from  this  as  though  Aristotle  placed 
the  happiness  of  man  in  the  natural  activity  of  the  soul,  and 
regarded  this  as  self-sufiicient,  still  he  is  not  blind  to  the  fact 
that  perfect  happiness  is  dependent  on  other  kinds  of  good  whose 
possession  is  not  absolutely  within  our  power.  It  is  true  he 
expresses  an  opinion  that  outward  things  in  moderation  are 
sufficient,  and  that  only  great  success  or  signal  reverses  materially 
influence  the  happiness  of  life ;  still  he  holds  that  wealth,  the 
possession  of  friends  and  children,  noble  birth,  beauty  of  body, 
etc.,  are  more  or  less  necessary  conditions  of  happiness,  though 
these  are  partly  dependent  on  accidental  circumstances.  These 
wavering  and  inconsistent  views  of  Aristotle  respecting  the  nature 
of  happiness,  naturally  rise  from  his  empirical  method  of  investi- 


134 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


gation.  Careful  in  noting  every  thing  whicli  our  limited  experience 
seems  to  utter,  lie  expressly  avoids  making  either  virtue  or  plea- 
sure his  principle,  because  actual  experience  shows  the  separation 
of  the  two.  Although  therefore  he  gives  directions  in  general  to 
strive  after  that  pleasure  in  which  the  good  man  delights,  or 
which  is  connected  with  a  virtuous  activity,  yet  is  pleasure  with 
him  an  end  for  its  own  sake,  and  not  merely  an  accident  of  virtue , 
an  empiricist,  Aristotle  is  here  also  a  dualist,  while  the  Stoics  and 
Epicureans  have  respectively  taken  and  held  fast  to  each  of  the 
two  sides. 

3.  Conception  of  Virtue. — As  has  already  been  seen  in  the 
Aristotelian  Polemic  against  Socrates,  virtue  is  the  product  of 
an  oft-repeated  moral  action,  a  condition  acquired  through  prac- 
tice, a  moral  dexterity  of  the  soul.  The  nature  of  this  dexterity 
is  seen  in  the  following  way  :  every  action  completes  something 
as  its  work ;  but  now  if  a  work  is  imperfect  when  it  has  either  a 
want  or  a  superfluity,  so  also  is  every  action  imperfect  in  so  far 
as  there  is  in  it  either  too  little  or  too  much ;  its  perfection, 
therefore,  is  only  found  as  it  contains  the  right  degree,  the  true 
mean  between  the  too  much  and  too  little.  Accordingly,  virtue 
in  general  may  be  explained  as  the  observation  of  the  right  mean 
in  action,  by  which  is  meant  not  the  arithmetical  or  absolute 
mean,  but  the  one  relative  to  ourselves.  For  what  is  enough  for 
one  individual  is  insufficient  for  another.  The  virtue  of  a  man, 
of  a  woman,  of  a  child,  and  of  a  slave  is  respectively  difierent. 
Thus,  virtue  depends  upon  time,  circumstance,  and  relation.  The 
determination  of  this  correct  mean  will  always  waver.  In  the 
impossibility  of  an  active  and  exhaustive  formula,  we  can  only 
say  respecting  it  that  it  is  the  correct  mean  as  determined  by  a 
correct  practical  insight  which  is  seen  to  be  such  by  the  intelli- 
gent man. 

It  follows  from  this  general  conception  of  virtue,  that  there 
will  be  as  many  separate  virtues  as  there  are  circumstances  of 
life,  and  as  men  are  ever  entering  into  new  relations,  in  which  it 
becomes  difficult  practically  to  determine  the  correct  method  of 
action,  Aristotle,  in  opposition  to  Plato,  would  limit  the  field  of 


ARISTOTLE. 


135 


separate  virtues  by  no  definite  number.  Only  certain  fundamental 
virtues  can  be  named  according  as  there  are  certain  fixed  and 
fundamental  relations  among  men.  For  instance,  man  has  a  fixed 
relation  to  pleasure  and  pain.  In  relation  to  pain,  the  true  moral 
mean  is  found  in  neither  fearing  nor  courting  it,  and  this  is  valor. 
In  relation  to  pleasure,  the  true  mean  standing  between  greediness 
and  indifi"erence  is  temperance.  In  social  life,  the  moral  mean  is 
between  doing  and  suffering  wrong,  which  is  justice.  In  a  similar 
way  many  other  virtues  might  be  characterized,  each  one  of  them 
standing  as  a  mean  between  two  vices,  the  one  of  which  expresses 
a  want  and  the  other  a  superfluity.  A  closer  exhibition  of  the 
Aristotelian  doctrine  of  virtue  would  have  muv;h  psychological 
and  linguistic  interest,  though  but  little  philosophical  worth. 
Aristotle  takes  the  conception  of  his  virtues  more  from  the  use 
of  language  than  from  a  thoroughly  applied  principle  of  classifi- 
cation. His  classification  of  virtues  is,  therefore,  without  any 
stable  ground,  and  is  difi"erently  given  in  different  places.  The 
conception  of  the  correct  mean  which  Aristotle  makes  the  mea- 
sure of  a  moral  act  is  obviously  unworthy  of  a  systematic  repre- 
sentation, for  as  it  cannot  be  determined  how  the  intelligent  man 
would  act  in  every  case,  there  could  never  be  given  any  specific 
directions  how  others  should  act.  In  fine,  the  criterion  of  virtue 
as  the  correct  mean  between  two  vices  cannot  be  always  applied 
for  in  the  virtue  of  wisdom,  e.  g.  which  Aristotle  describes  as  the 
mean  between  simplicity  and  cunning,  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
too  much. 

4.  The  State. — Aristotle,  like  Plato,  makes  the  highest  con- 
dition of  moral  virtue  attainable  only  through  political  life.  The 
state  exists  before  the  individual,  as  the  whole  is  prior  to  its  parts. 
The  rationality  and  morality  of  the  state  is  thus  antecedent  to 
that  of  the  individual.  Hence  in  the  best  state,  moral  and 
political  virtue,  the  virtue  of  the  man  and  the  virtue  of  the  citi- 
zen are  one  and  the  same  thing,  although  in  states  as  they  are,  the 
good  citizen  is  not  necessarily  also  the  good  man.  But  though 
this  principle  harmonized  with  Plato,  yet  Aristotle,  at  whose  time 
the  old  aboriginal  states  had  already  begun  their  process  of  dis- 


136 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHT. 


solution,  cterished  a  very  different  view  concerning  the  relation 
of  the  individual  and  the  family  to  the  state.  He  allows  to  both 
these  an  incomparably  greater  consideration,  and  yields  to  them  a 
far  wider  field  of  independent  action.  Hence  he  combats  Plato's 
community  of  wives  and  goods,  not  simply  on  the  ground  of  its 
practicability,  but  also  on  the  ground  of  its  principle,  since  the 
state  cannot  be  conceived  as  a  strict  unit,  or  as  possessing  any 
such  centralization  as  would  weaken  or  destrcy  individual  activity. 
With  Plato  the  state  is  but  the  product  of  the  philosophical 
reflection,  while  with  Aristotle  it  results  from  given  circumstances, 
from  history  and  experience,  and  he  therefore  wholly  omits  to 
sketch  a  model  state  or  a  normal  constitution,  but  carefully  con- 
fines his  attention  to  those  which  actually  exist.  Although  the 
ideal  of  a  state  constitution  in  the  form  of  a  limited  monarchy  is 
unmistakably  in  his  mind,  still  he  contents  himself  with  portray- 
ing the  difierent  kinds  of  polities  in  their  peculiarities,  their  origin, 
and  their  reciprocal  transitions.  He  does  not  undertake  to  declare 
which  is  the  best  state  absolutely,  since  this  depends  upon  circum- 
stances, and  one  constitution  is  not  adapted  for  every  state.  He 
simply  attempts  to  show  what  form  of  the  state  is  relatively  the 
best  and  the  most  advisable  under  certain  historical  circumstances, 
and  under  given  natural,  climatic,  geographic,  economic,  and  in- 
tellectual conditions.  In  this  he  is  faithful  to  the  character  of 
his  whole  philosophy.  Standing  on  the  basis  of  the  empirical,  he 
aidvances  here  as  elsewhere,  critically  and  reflectively,  and  in  de- 
spair of  attaining  the  absolutely  true  and  good,  he  seeks  for  these 
relatively,  with  his  eye  fixed  only  on  the  probable  and  the  prac- 
ticable. 

VI. — The  Peripatetic  School. — The  school  of  Aristotle, 
called  the  Peripatetic,  can  here  only  be  mentioned ;  the  want  of 
independence  in  its  philosophizing,  and  the  absence  of  any  great 
and  universal  influence,  rendering  it  unworthy  an  extended  notice. 
Theophrastus,  Eudemus,  and  Strato  are  its  most  famous  leaders. 
Like  most  philosophical  schools,  it  confines  itself  chiefly  to  a  more 
thorough  elaboration  and  explanation  of  the  system  of  its  master, 
tn  some  empirical  provinces,  especially  the  physical,  the  attempt 


ARISTOTLE. 


137 


was  made  to  carry  out  still  further  the  system,  while  at  the  same 
time  its  speculative  basis  was  set  aside  and  neglected. 

YII. — Transition  to  the  Post- Aristotelian  Philosophy. — 
The  productive  energy  of  Grecian  philosophy  expends  itself  with 
Aristotle,  contemporaneously  and  in  connection  with  the  universal 
decay  of  Grecian  life  and  spirit.  Instead  of  the  great  and  uni- 
versal systems  of  a  Plato  and  an  Aristotle,  we  have  now  systems 
of  a  partial  and  one-sided  character,  corresponding  to  that  uni- 
versal breach  between  the  subject  and  the  objective  world  which 
characterized  the  civil,  religious,  and  social  life  of  this  last  epoch 
of  Greece,  the  time  succeeding  Alexander  the  Great.  That  sub- 
jectivity-, which  had  been  first  propounded  by  the  Sophists,  was 
at  length,  after  numerous  struggles,  victorious,  though  its  triumph 
was  gained  upon  the  ruins  of  the  Grecian  civil  and  artistic  life ; 
the  individual  has  become  emancipated,  the  subject  is  no  longer 
to  be  given  up  to  the  objective  world,  the  liberated  subjectivity 
must  now  be  perfected  and  satisfied.  This  process  of  develop- 
ment is  seen  in  the  post- Aristotelian  philosophy,  though  it  finds 
its  conditioning  cause  in  the  character  of  the  preceding  philoso- 
phical strivings.  The  dualism  which  formed  the  chief  want  of 
the  systems  both  of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  has  forced  itself  upon 
our  attention  at  every  step.  The  attempt  which  had  been  made, 
with  the  greatest  expenditure  of  which  the  Grecian  mind  was 
capable,  to  refer  back  to  one  ultimate  ground  both  subject  and 
object,  mind  and  matter,  had  produced  no  satisfactory  result ;  and 
these  two  oppositions,  around  which  all  previous  philosophy  had 
struggled  in  vain,  still  remained  disconnected.  Wearied  with 
the  fruitless  attempts  at  mediation,  the  subject  now  breaks  with 
the  objective  world.  Its  attention  is  directed  towards  itself  in 
its  own  self-consciousness.  The  result  of  this  gives  us  either 
Stoicism,  where  the  moral  subject  appears  in  the  self-sufficiency 
of  the  sage  to  whom  every  external  good  and  every  objective 
work  is  indifierent,  and  who  finds  a  good  only  in  a  moral  activity ; 
Dr  Epicureanism,  where  the  subject  delights  itself  in  the  inner 
feeling  of  pleasure  and  the  calm  repose  of  a  satisfied  heart,  enjoy- 
ing the  present  and  the  past,  and  never  fearing  the  future  while 


138 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPnY. 


it  sees  in  the  objective  -vvorld  only  a  means  by  which  it  can  utter 
itself;  or,  again,  Scepticism,  where  the  subject,  doubting  and 
rejecting  all  objective  truth  and  science,  appears  in  the  apathy  of 
the  Sceptic,  who  has  broken  both  theoretically  and  practically 
with  the  objective  world.  In  fine,  New-Platonism,  the  last  of  the 
ancient  philosophical  systems,  bears  this  same  character  of  sub- 
jectivity, for  this  whole  system  turns  upon  the  exaltation  of  the 
subject  to  the  absolute,  and  wherever  it  speculates  respecting  God 
and  his  relation  to  man,  it  is  alone  in  order  to  establish  the  pro- 
gressive transition  from  the  absolute  object  to  the  human  person- 
ality. The  ruling  principle  in  it  all  is  the  interest  of  the  subjec- 
tivity, and  the  fact  that  in  this  system  there  are  numerous  objective 
determinations,  is  only  because  the  subject  has  become  absolute. 


SECTION  XVII. 

STOICISM. 

Zeno,  of  Cittium,  a  city  of  Cyprus,  an  elder  contemporary  of 
Antigonus  Gronatas,  king  of  Macedon,  is  generally  given  as  the 
founder  of  the  Stoical  school.  Deprived  of  his  property  by 
shipwreck,  he  took  refuge  in  philosophy,  incited  also  by  an  inner 
bias  to  such  pursuits.  He  at  first  became  a  disciple  of  the  Cynic 
Crateas,  then  of  Stilpo,  one  of  the  Megarians,  and  lastly  he  be- 
took himself  to  the  Academy,  where  he  heard  the  lessons  of 
Xenocrates  and  Polemo.  Hence  the  eclectic  character  of  his 
teaching.  It  has  in  fact  been  charged  against  him,  that  difiering 
but  little  if  at  all  from  the  earlier  schools,  he  attempted  to  form 
a  school  of  his  own,  with  a  system  wherein  he  had  changed  noth- 
ing but  names.  He  opened  a  school  at  Athens,  in  the  "  varie- 
gated porch,"  so  called  from  the  paintings  of  Polygnotus,  with 
which  it  was  adorned,  whence  his  adherents  received  the  name  of 
philosophers  of  the  porch"  (Stoics).  Zeno  is  said  to  have  presi- 
ded over  his  school  for  fifty-eight  years,  and  at  a  very  advanced 


STOICISM. 


139 


age  to  have  put  an  end  to  Ms  existence.  He  is  praised  for  the 
temperance  and  the  austerity  of  his  habits,  while  his  abstemious- 
ness is  proverbial.  The  monument  in  his  honor,  erected  after 
his  death  by  the  Athenians,  at  the  instance  of  Antigonus,  bore 
the  high  but  simple  eulogium  that  his  life  had  been  in  unison 
with  his  philosophy.  Cleanthes  was  the  successor  of  Zeno  in 
the  Stoic  school,  and  faithfully  carried  out  the  method  of  his 
master.  Cleanthes  was  succeeded  by  Chrysippiis,  who  died 
about  208  B.  C.  He  has  been  regarded  as  the  chief  prop  of  this 
school,  in  which  respect  it  was  said  of  him,  that  without  a  Chry- 
sippus  there  would  never  have  been  a  Porch.  At  all  events,  as 
Chrysippus  was  an  object  of  the  greatest  veneration,  and  of  al- 
most undisputed  authority  with  the  later  Stoics,  he  ought  to  be 
considered  as  the  principal  founder  of  the  school.  He  was  a 
writer  so  voluminous,  that  his  works  have  been  said  to  amount  to 
seven  hundred  and  five,  among  which,  however,  were  repeated 
treatises  upon  the  same  propositions,  and  citations  without  mea- 
sure from  poets  and  historians,  given  to  prove  and  illustrate  his 
opinions.  Not  one  of  all  his  writings  has  come  down  to  us. 
Chrysippus  closes  the  series  of  the  philosophers  who  founded  the 
Porch.  The  later  heads  of  the  school,  as  Panatius,  the  friend 
of  the  younger  Scipio  (his  famous  work  De  Officiis,  Cicero  has 
elaborated  in  his  treatise  of  the  same  name),  and  Fosidonius, 
may  be  classed  with  Cicero,  Pompeius,  and  others,  and  were 
eclectic  in  their  teachings.  The  Stoics  have  connected  philoso- 
phy most  intimately  with  the  duties  of  practical  life.  Philoso- 
phy is  with  them  the  practice  of  wisdom,  the  exercise  of  virtue. 
Virtue  and  science  are  with  them  one,  in  so  far  at  least  that  they 
divide  virtue  in  reference  to  philosophy  into  physical,  ethical,  and 
logical.  But  though  they  go  on  according  to  this  threefold  di- 
vision, and  treat  of  logic  and  physics,  and  though  they  even  rank 
physics  higher  than  either  of  the  other  sciences,  regarding  it  as 
the  mother  of  the  ethical  and  the  science  of  the  Divine,  yet  do 
we  find  their  characteristic  stand-point  most  prominently  in  their 
theory  of  morals. 

1.  Logic. — We  have  already  said  that  it  is  the  breach  be* 


140 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


tween  subject  and  object,  wliicli  forms  the  basis  of  all  post-Aris- 
totelian philosophy.  The  beginning  of  this  philosophy  of  sub- 
jectivity is  found  with  the  Stoics.  The  feature  most  worthy  of 
notice  in  their  logic,  is  the  striving  after  a  subjective  criterion  of 
the  truth,  by  which  they  might  distinguish  the  true  representa- 
tion from  the  false.  Since  they  limited  all  scientific  knowledge 
to  the  knowledge  of  the  senses,  they  found  this  criterion  in  that 
which  was  evident  in  the  sensuous  impression.  They  conceived 
that  they  had  answered  the  whole  problem,  in  af&rming  that  the 
true  or  conceivable  representation  reveals  not  only  itself,  but  also 
its  object :  it,  they  said,  is  nothing  else  than  a  representation 
which  is  produced  by  a  present  object  in  a  manner  like  itself 

2.  Physics. — In  their  physics,  where  they  follow  for  the  most 
part  Heraclitus,  the  Stoics  are  distinguished  from  their  prede- 
cessors, especially  from  Plato  and  Aristotle,  by  their  thoroughly 
carried  out  proposition  that  nothing  uncorporeal  exists,  that  every 
thing  essential  is  corporeal  (just  as  in  their  logic  they  had  sought 
to  derive  all  knowledge  from  the  sensuous  perception).  This 
sensualism  or  materialism  of  the  Stoics  which,  as  we  have  seen  in 
their  logic,  lies  at  the  basis  of  their  theory  of  knowledge,  might 
seem  foreign  to  all  their  moral  and  idealistic  tendencies,  but  is 
clearly  explained  from  their  subjective  stand-point,  for,  when  the 
thought  has  become  so  intensely  engrossed  in  the  subject,  the  ob- 
jective world  can  only  be  regarded  as  a  corporeal  and  material 
existence.  The  most  immediate  consequence  of  such  a  view  is 
their  pantheism.  Aristotle  before  them  had  separated  the  Divine 
Being  from  the  world,  as  the  pure  and  eternal  form  from  the 
eternal  matter ;  but  so  far  as  this  separation  implied  a  distinction 
which  was  not  simply  logical,  but  actual  and  real,  the  Stoics  would 
not  admit  it.  It  seemed  to  them  impossible  to  dissever  God  from 
matter,  and  they  therefore  considered  God  and  the  world  as  power 
and  its  manifestation,  and  thus  as  one.  Matter  is  the  passive 
ground  of  things,  the  original  substratum  for  the  divine  activity : 
God  is  the  active  and  formative  energy  of  matter  dwelling  within 
it,  and  essentially  united  to  it :  the  world  is  the  body  of  God,  and 
God  is  the  soul  of  the  world.    The  Stoics,  therefore,  considered 


STOICISM. 


141 


God  and  matter  as  one  identical  substance,  which,  on  the  side 
of  its  passive  and  changeable  capacity  they  call  matter,  and  on 
the  side  of  its  active  and  changeless  energy,  God.  But  since  they, 
as  already  remarked,  considered  the  world  as  ensouled  by  God  in 
the  light  of  a  living  and  rational  being,  they  were  obliged  to  treat 
the  conception  of  God  not  only  in  a  physical  but  also  in  its  ethical 
aspect.  God  is  not  only  in  the  world  as  the  ruling  and  living 
energy  of  this  great  ^wov  (animal),  but  he  is  also  the  universal 
reason  which  rules  the  whole  world  and  penetrates  all  matter ; 
he  is  the  gracious  Providence  which  cares  for  the  individual  and 
the  whole ;  he  is  wise,  and  is  the  ground  of  that  natural  law  which 
commands  the  good  and  forbids  the  evil;  he  punishes  and  rewards; 
he  possesses  a  perfect  and  blessed  life.  But  accustomed  to  regard 
every  thing  spiritual  only  in  a  sensuous  way,  the  Stoics  were 
obliged  to  clothe  this  ideal  conception  of  God  in  a  material  form, 
apprehending  it  as  the  vital  warmth  or  an  original  fire,  analogous 
to  the  view  of  the  earlier  natural  philosophers,  who  held  that  the 
soul,  and  even  reason  itself,  consisted  in  the  vital  warmth.  The 
Stoics  express  this  thought  in  different  ways.  At  one  time  they 
call  God  the  rational  breath  which  passes  through  all  nature ;  at 
another,  the  artistic  fire  which  fashions  or  begets  the  universe ;  and 
still  again  the  ether ;  which,  however,  they  hardly  distinguish  from 
the  artistic  fire.  From  these  varying  views,  we  see  that  it  did 
not  belong  to  the  Stoics  to  represent  the  conception  of  God  in  any 
determinate  kind  of  existence.  They  availed  themselves  of  these 
expressions  only  to  indicate  that  God,  as  the  universal  animating 
energy  in  the  world,  could  not  be  disconnected  from  a  corporeal 
agency.  This  identification  of  God  and  the  world,  according  to 
which  the  Stoics  regarded  the  whole  formation  of  the  universe  as 
but  a  period  in  the  development  of  God,  renders  their  remaining 
doctrine  concerning  the  world  very  simple.  Every  thing  in  the 
world  seemed  to  them  to  be  permeated  by  the  divine  life,  and  was 
regarded  as  but  the  flowing  out  of  this  most  perfect  life  through 
certain  channels,  until  it  returned  in  a  necessary  circle  back  again 
to  itself.  It  is  not  necessary  here  to  speak  more  closely  of  the 
physics  of  this  school. 


142 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


3.  The  Ethics. — The  ethics  of  the  Stoics  is  most  closely  con- 
nected with  their  physics.  In  the  physics  we  saw  the  rational 
order  of  the  universe  as  it  existed  through  the  divine  thought. 
In  the  ethics,  the  highest  law  of  human  action,  and  thus  the  whole 
moral  legality  of  life  is  dependent  upon  this  rational  order  and 
conformity  to  law  in  universal  nature,  and  the  highest  good  or  the 
highest  end  of  our  strivings  is  to  shape  our  life  according  to  this 
universal  law,  to  live  in  conformity  with  the  harmony  of  the  world 
or  with  nature.  "  Follow  nature,"  or  "  live  in  harmony  with  na- 
ture," is  the  moral  maxim  of  the  Stoics,  More  accurately :  live 
in  harmony  with  thy  rational  nature  so  far  as  this  has  not  been 
distorted  nor  refined  by  art,  but  is  held  in  its  natural  simplicity. 

From  this  moral  principle,  in  which  we  have  also  the  Stoic 
conception  of  virtue,  the  peculiarities  of  their  theory  of  morals 
follow  with  logical  necessity. 

(1.)  Respecting  the  Relation  of  Virtue  to  Pleasure. — When 
the  demand  is  made  that  the  life  should  be  in  conformity  with 
nature,  the  individual  becomes  wholly  subjected  to  the  universal, 
and  every  personal  end  is  excluded.  Hence  pleasure,  which  of 
all  ends  is  the  most  individual,  must  be  disregarded.  In  pleasure 
that  activity  in  which  blessedness  consists  is  abated,  and  this  could 
only  appear  to  the  Stoics  as  a  restraint  of  life,  and  thus  as  an  evil. 
Pleasure  is  not  in  conformity  with  nature,  and  is  no  end  of  nature, 
says  Cleanthes;  and  though  other  Stoics  relax  a  little  from  the 
strictness  of  this  opinion,  and  admit  that  pleasure  may  be  accord- 
ing to  nature,  and  is  to  be  considered  in  a  certain  degree  as  a  good, 
yet  they  all  held  fast  to  the  doctrine,  that  it  has  no  moral  worth 
and  is  no  end  of  nature,  but  is  only  something  which  is  accident- 
ally connected  with  the  free  and  fitting  activity  of  nature,  while 
itself  is  not  an  activity,  but  a  passive  condition  of  the  soul.  In 
this  lies  the  whole  severity  of  the  Stoic  doctrine  of  morals; 
every  thing  personal  is  cast  aside,  every  external  end  of  action  is 
foreign  to  the  moral  man,  the  action  in  wisdom  is  the  only  good. 
From  this  follows  directly  : 

(2.)  The  Vieiu  of  the  Stoics  Concerning  External  Good. — If 
virtue,  as  the  activity  in  conformity  to  nature,  is  exclusively  a 


STOICISM. 


143 


good,  and  if  it  alone  can  lead  to  happiness,  then  external  good 
of  every  kind  is  something  morally  indifferent,  and  can  neither  be 
the  object  of  our  striving  nor  the  end  of  any  moral  action.  The 
action  itself  and  not  that  towards  which  it  tends  is  good.  Hence 
such  special  ends  as  health,  wealth,  &c.,  are  in  themselves  worth- 
less and  indifferent.  They  may  result  either  in  good  or  evil,  and 
when  deprived  of  them  the  happiness  of  the  virtuous  man  is  not 
destroyed.  The  Stoics  yield  from  the  rigor  of  their  fundamental 
principle  only  in  a  single  instance.  They  admit  that  there  may 
be  a  distinction  among  indifferent  things ;  that  while  none  of  these 
can  be  called  a  moral  good,  yet  some  may  be  preferable  to  others, 
and  that  the  preferable,  so  far  as  it  contributes  to  a  life  in  con- 
formity to  nature,  should  enter  into  the  account  of  a  moral  life. 
So  the  sage  will  prefer  health  and  wealth  when  these  are  balanced 
in  the  choice  with  sickness  and  poverty,  but  though  these  objects 
have  been  rationally  chosen,  he  does  not  esteem  them  as  really 
good,  for  they  are  not  the  highest,  they  are  inferior  to  the  vir- 
tuous acting,  in  comparison  with  which  every  thing  else  sinks  to 
insignificance.  In  making  this  distinction  between  the  good  and 
the  preferable,  we  see  how  the  Stoics  exclude  from  the  good  every 
thing  relative,  and  hold  fast  to  it  alone  in  its  highest  significance. 

(3.)  This  abstract  apprehension  of  the  conception  of  virtue  is 
still  farther  verified  in  the  rigid  antagonism  which  the  Stoics 
affirmed  between  virtue  and  not-virtue,  reason  and  sense.  Either, 
they  conclude,  reason  is  awakened  in  the  life  of  man  and  holds 
the  mastery,  over  him,  or  it  is  not  awakened,  and  he  serves  his 
irrational  instincts.  In  the  former  case  we  have  a  good  and  in  the 
latter  a  bad  man,  while  between  these  two  cases  as  between  virtue 
and  vice,  there  is  no  mean.  And  since  virtue  cannot  be  partially 
possessed,  but  the  man  must  be  wholly  virtuous  or  not  at  all,  it 
follows  that  virtue  as  such  is  without  degree,  just  as  truth  is,  and 
hence  also  all  good  acts  are  equally  good,  because  they  spring  from 
the  full  freedom  of  the  reason,  and  all  vicious  ones  equally  bad 
because  they  are  impelled  by  the  irrational  instinct. 

(4.)  But  this  abstractedness  of  the  moral  stand-point,  this  rigid 
opposition  of  reason  and  irrationality,  of  the  highest  good  and  the 


144 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHIXOSOPHY. 


individnal  good,  of  virtue  and  pleasure,  has  no  power  to  furnisli 
a  system  of  concrete  moral  duties.  The  universal  moral  principle  of 
the  Stoics  fails  in  its  applicability  to  the  individual  instance.  The 
Stoic  morals  has  no  concrete  principle  of  moral  self-determination. 
How  must  we  act  in  every  individual  instance,  in  every  moral 
relation,  so  as  to  act  according  to  nature  ?  To  this  inquiry  Sto- 
icism can  give  no  answer.  Its  system  of  particular  duties  is  thus 
wholly  without  a  scientific  form,  and  is  only  held  together  by 
some  universal  conceptions  which  it  contains.  For  the  most  part 
they  satisfy  themselves  with  describing  in  general  terms  the  action 
according  to  nature,  and  with  portraying  their  ideal  of  the  wise 
man.  The  characteristics  which  they  give  this  ideal  are  partly 
paradoxical.  The  wise  man  is  free  even  in  chains,  for  he  acts 
from  himself  unmoved  by  fear  or  desire ;  the  wise  man  alone  is 
king,  for  he  alone  is  not  bound  by  laws  and  owes  fealty  to  no  one ; 
he  is  the  true  rich  man,  the  true  priest,  prophet,  and  poet.  He 
is  exalted  above  all  law  and  every  custom ;  even  that  which  is 
most  despicable  and  base — deception,  suicide,  murder — ^he  may 
commit  at  a  proper  time  and  in  a  virtuous  character.  In  a  word 
the  Stoics  describe  their  wise  man  as  a  god,  and  yield  it  to  him 
to  be  proud  and  to  boast  of  his  life  like  Zeus.  But  where  shall  we 
find  such  a  sage  ?  Certainly  not  among  the  living.  In  the  time 
long  ago  there  may  have  been  a  perfect  sage  of  such  a  pattern ; 
but  now,  and  for  a  long  time  back,  are  men  at  best  only  fools 
who  strive  after  wisdom  and  virtue.  The  conception  of  the  wise 
man  represented,  therefore,  to  the  Stoics  only  an  ideal,  the  actu- 
alization of  which  we  should  strive  after,  though  without  ever 
hoping  to  reach  it ;  and  yet  their  system  of  particular  duties  is 
almost  wholly  occupied  in  portraying  this  unreal  and  abstract 
ideal — a  contradiction  in  which  it  is  seen  most  clearly  that  their 
whole  stand-point  is  one  of  abstract  subjectivity. 


EPICUREANISM. 


145 


SECTION  XVIII. 

EPICUKEANISM. 

The  Epicurean  school  arose  at  Athens,  almost  contemporane- 
ously with  the  Porch,  though  perhaps  a  little  earlier  than  this. 
Epicurus,  its  founder,  was  born  342  B.C.,  six  years  after  the  death 
of  Plato.  Of  his  youth  and  education  little  is  inown.  In  his 
thirty-sixth  year  he  opened  a  philosophical  school  at  Athens, 
over  which  he  presided  till  his  death,  271  B.C.  His  disciples  and 
adherents  formed  a  social  league,  in  which  they  were  united  by 
the  closest  band  of  friendship,  illustrating  the  general  condition 
of  things  in  Greece  after  the  time  of  Alexander,  when  the  social 
took  the  place  of  the  decaying  poetical  life.  Epicurus  himself 
compared  his  society  to  the  Pythagorean  fraternity,  although  the 
community  of  goods,  which  forms  an  element  in  the  latter,  Epi- 
curus excludes,  affirming  that  true  friends  can  confide  in  one 
another.  The  moral  conduct  of  Epicurus  has  been  repeatedly 
assailed  but,  according  to  the  testimony  of  the  most  reliable 
witnesses,  his  life  was  blameless  in  every  respect,  and  his  personal 
character  was  estimable  and  amiable.  Moreover,  it  cannot  be 
doubted  that  much  of  that,  which  is  told  by  some,  of  the  offensive 
voluptuousness  of  the  Epicurean  band,  should  be  regarded  as 
calumny.  Epicurus  was  a  voluminous  writer,  surpassing,  in  this 
respect,  even  Aristotle,  and  exceeded  by  Chrysippus  alone.  To 
the  loss  of  his  greater  works  he  has  himself  contributed,  by  his 
practice  of  composing  summaries  of  his  system,  which  he  recom- 
mended his  disciples  to  commit  to  memory.  These  summaries 
have  been  for  the  most  part  preserved. 

The  end  which  Epicurus  proposed  to  himself  in  science  is  dis- 
tinctly revealed  in  his  definition  of  philosophy.  He  calls  it  an 
activity  which,  by  means  of  conceptions  and  arguments,  procures 
the  happiness  of  life.  Its  end  is,  therefore,  with  him  essentially 
a  practical  one,  and  on  this  account  the  object  of  his  whole  system 
7 


146 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


is  to  produce  a  scheme  of  morals  wliicli  should  teach  us  how  we 
might  inevitably  attain  a  happy  life.  It  is  true  that  the  Epicu- 
reans adopted  the  usual  division  of  philosophy  into  logic,  which 
they  called  canonics,  physics,  and  ethics ;  but  they  confined  logic 
to  the  doctrine  of  the  criterion  of  truth,  and  considered  it  only  as 
an  instrument  and  introduction  to  physics,  while  they  only  treated 
of  physics  as  existing  wholly  for  ethics,  and  being  necessary  in 
order  to  free  men  from  superstitious  fear,  and  deliver  them  from 
the  power  of  fables  and  mythical  fancies  concerning  nature,  which 
might  hinder  the  attainment  of  happiness.  "We  have  therefore  in 
Epicureanism  the  three  old  parts  of  philosophy,  but  in  a  reversed 
order,  since  logic  and  physics  here  stand  as  the  handmaids  of 
ethics.  We  shall  confine  ourselves  in  our  exposition  to  the  latter, 
since  the  Epicurean  canonics  and  physics  ofi"er  little  scientific 
interest,  and  since  the  physics  especially  is  not  only  very  incom- 
plete and  without  any  internal  connection,  but  rests  entirely  upon 
the  atomic  theory  of  Democritus. 

Epicurus,  like  Aristotle  and  the  other  philosophers  of  his  day, 
placed  the  highest  good  in  happiness,  or  a  happy  life.  More 
closely  he  makes  pleasure  to  be  the  principal  constituent  of  happi- 
ness, and  even  calls  it  the  highest  good.  But  Epicurus  goes  on  to 
give  a  more  accurate  determination  of  pleasure,  and  in  this  he  difiers 
essentially  from  his  predecessors,  the  Cyrenians.    (cf.  ^  XIII.  3.) 

1.  While  with  Aristippus  the  pleasure  of  the  moment  is  made 
the  end  of  human  efforts,  Epicurus  directs  men  to  strive  after 
a  system  of  pleasures  which  should  insure  an  abiding  course  of 
happiness  for  the  whole  life.  True  pleasure  is  thus  the  object  to 
be  considered  and  weighed.  Many  a  pleasure  should  be  despised 
because  it  will  result  in  pain,  and  many  a  pain  should  be  rejoiced 
in  because  it  would  lead  to  a  greater  pleasure. 

2.  Since  the  sage  will  seek  after  the  highest  good,  not  simply 
for  the  present  but  for  his  whole  life,  he  will  hold  the  pleasures 
and  pains  of  the  soul,  which  like  memory  and  hope  stretch  over 
the  past  and  the  future,  in  greater  esteem  than  those  of  the  body, 
which  relate  only  to  the  present  moment.  The  pleasure  of  the 
soul  consists  in  the  untroubled  tranquillity  of  the  sage,  who  rests 


EPICUREANISM. 


147 


secure  in  the  feeling  of  his  inner  worth  and  his  exaltation  above 
the  strokes  of  destiny.  Thus  Epicurus,  would  say  that  it  is  better 
to  be  miserable  but  rational  than  to  be  happy  and  irrational,  and 
that  the  wise  man  might  be  happy  though  in  torture.  He  would 
even  affirm,  like  a  true  follower  of  Aristotle,  that  pleasure  and 
happiness  were  most  closely  connected  with  virtue,  that  virtue  is 
in  fact  inseparable  from  true  pleasure,  and  that  there  can  be  no 
agreeable  life  without  virtue,  and  no  virtue  without  an  agreeable 
life. 

3.  While  other  Hedonists  would  regard  the  most  positive  and 
intense  feeling  of  pleasure  as  the  highest  good,  Epicurus,  on  the 
other  hand,  fixed  his  eye  on  a  happiness  which  should  be  abiding 
and  for  the  whole  life.  He  would  not  seek  the  most  exquisite 
enjoyments  in  order  to  attain  to  a  happy  life,  but  he  rather  recom- 
mends one  to  be  satisfied  with  little,  and  to  practise  sobriety  and 
temperance  of  life.  He  guards  himself  against  such  a  false  ap- 
plication of  his  doctrine  as  would  imply  that  the  pleasure  of  the 
debauchee  were  the  highest  good,  and  boasts  that  with  a  little 
barley-bread  and  water  he  would  rival  Zeus  in  happiness.  He 
even  expresses  an  aversion  for  all  costly  pleasures,  not,  however, 
in  themselves,  but  because  of  the  evil  consequences  which  they 
entail.  True,  the  Epicurean  sage  need  not  therefore  live  as  a 
Cynic.  He  will  enjoy  himself  where  he  can  without  harm,  and 
will  even  seek  to  acquire  means  to  live  with  dignity  and  ease.  But 
though  all  these  enjoyments  of  life  may  properly  belong  to  the 
sage,  yet  he  can  deprive  himself  of  them  without  misery — though 
he  ought  not  to  do  so — since  he  enjoys  the  truest  and  most  essen- 
tial pleasure  in  the  calmness  of  his  soul  and  the  tranquillity  of  his 
heart.  In  opposition  to  the  positive  pleasure  of  some  Hedonists, 
the  theory  of  Epicurus  expends  itself  in  negative  conceptions,  re- 
presenting that  freedom  from  pain  is  pleasure,  and  that  hence  the 
activity  of  the  sage  should  be  prominently  directed  to  avoid  that 
which  is  disagreeable.  All  that  man  does,  says  Epicurus,  is  that 
he  may  neither  suffer  nor  apprehend  pain,  and  in  another  place 
he  remarks,  that  not  to  live  is  far  from  being  an  evil.  Hence 
death,  for  which  men  have  the  greatest  terror,  the  wise  man  does 


148 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


not  fear.  For  while  we  live,  death  is  not,  and  when  death  is,  we 
are  not ;  when  it  is  present  we  feel  it  not,  for  it  is  the  end  of  all 
feeling,  and  that,  which  by  its  presence  cannot  affect  our  happiness, 
ought  not,  when  thought  of  as  a  future,  to  trouble  us.  Here  Epi- 
curus must  bear  the  censure  urged  against  him  by  the  ancients, 
that  he  does  not  recognize  any  positive  end  of  life,  and  that  the 
object  after  which  his  sage  should  strive  is  a  mere  passionless 
state. 

The  crown  of  Epicurus's  view  of  the  universe  is  his  doctrine 
of  the  gods,  where  he  has  carried  over  his  ideal  of  happiness.  To 
the  gods  belong  a  human  form,  though  without  any  fixed  body  or 
human  wants.  In  the  void  space  they  lead  an  undisturbed  and 
changeless  life,  whose  happiness  is  incapable  of  increase.  From 
the  blessedness  of  the  gods  he  inferred  that  they  had  nothing  to 
do  with  the  management  of  our  affairs,  for  blessedness  is  repose, 
and  on  this  account  the  gods  neither  take  trouble  to  themselves 
nor  cause  it  to  others.  It  may  indeed  be  said  that  these  inactive 
gods  of  Epicurus,  these  indestructible  and  yet  not  fixed  forms, 
these  bodies  which  are  not  bodies,  have  but  an  ill  connection  with 
his  general  system,  in  which  there  is  in  fact  no  point  to  which  his 
doctrine  of  the  gods  can  be  fitly  joined — but  a  strict  scientific 
connection  is  hardly  the  merit  of  this  whole  philosophy. 


SECTION  XIX. 

SCEPTICISM  AND  THE  NEW  ACADEMY. 

This  subjective  direction  already  noticed  was  carried  out  to 
its  farthest  extent  by  the  Sceptics,  who  broke  down  completely  the 
bridge  between  subject  and  object,  denying  all  objective  truth, 
knowledge  and  science,  and  wholly  withdrawing  the  philosopher 
from  every  thing  but  himself  and  his  own  subjective  estimates. 
In  this  direction  we  may  distinguish  between  the  old  Scepticism, 
the  new  Academy,  and  the  later  Scepticism. 


SCEPTICISM  AND  THE  NEW  ACADEMY. 


149 


1.  The  old  ScErTiciSM. — Pyrrho  of  Elis,  who  was  perhaps  a 
cotemporary  of  Aristotle,  was  the  head  of  the  old  Sceptics.  He 
left  no  writings  behind  him,  and  we  are  dependent  for  a  knowledge 
of  his  opinions  upon  his  scholar  and  follower,  Timon  of  Plilius. 
The  tendency  of  these  sceptical  philosophers,  like  that  of  the 
Stoics  and  Epicureans,  was  a  practical  one,  for  philosophy,  said 
they,  ought  to  lead  us  to  happiness.  But  in  order  to  live  happily 
we  must  know  how  things  are,  and,  therefore,  in  what  kind  of  a 
relation  we  stand  to  them.  The  first  of  these  questions  the  Scep- 
tics answered  by  attempting  to  show  that  all  things,  without  ex- 
ception, are  indifferent  as  to  truth  and  falsehood,  uncertain,  and 
in  nowise  subject  to  man's  judgment.  Neither  our  senses  nor  our 
opinions  concerning  any  thing  teach  us  any  truth;  to  every 
precept  and  to  every  position  a  contrary  may  be  advanced,  and 
hence  the  contradictory  views  of  men,  and  especially  of  the  phi- 
losophies of  the  schools  respecting  one  and  the  same  thing.  All 
objective  knowledge  and  science  being  thus  impossible,  the  true 
relation  of  the  philosopher  to  things  consists  in  the  entire  suspen- 
sion of  judgment,  and  the  withholding  of  every  positive  assertion. 
In  order  to  avoid  every  thing  like  a  positive  assertion,  the  Sceptics 
had  recourse  to  a  variety  of  artifices,  and  availed  themselves  of 
doubtful  modes  of  expression,  such  as  it  is  possible  ;  it  may  he 
so  ;  perhaps  ;  I  assert  nothing^ — cautiously  subjoining  to  this 
last — not  even  that  I  assert  nothing.  By  this  suspension  of 
judgment  the  Sceptics  thought  they  could  attain  their  practical 
end,  happiness ;  for  the  abstinence  from  all  positive  opinion  is  fol- 
lowed by  a  freedom  from  all  mental  disturbance,  as  a  substance  is 
by  a  shadow.  He  who  has  embraced  Scepticism  lives  thencefor- 
ward tranquilly,  without  inquietude,  without  agitation,  with  an 
equable  state  of  mind,  and,  in  fact,  divested  of  his  humanity. 
Pyrrho  is  said  to  have  originated  the  doctrine  which  lies  at  the 
basis  of  sceptical  apathy,  that  no  difference  exists  between  sick- 
ness and  health,  or  between  life  and  death.  The  Sceptics,  for 
the  most  part,  derived  the  material  for  their  views  from  the  pre- 
vious investigations  in  the  dogmatic  schools.  But  the  grounds  on 
which  they  rested  were  far  from  being  profound,  and  were  for  the 


150 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


most  part  either  dialectic  errors  which  could  easily  be  refuted,  oi 
mere  subtleties.  The  use  of  the  following  ten  tropes  is  ascribed 
to  the  old  Sceptics,  though  these  were  perhaps  not  definitely 
brought  out  by  either  Pyrrho  or  Timon,  but  were  probably  first 
collected  by  ^nesidemus,  soon  after  the  time  of  Cicero.  The 
withholding  of  all  decisive  judgment  may  rest ;  (1)  upon  the  dis- 
tinction generally  existing  between  individual  living  objects  ;  (2) 
upon  the  difi'erence  among  men ;  (3)  the  diflferent  functions  of  the 
organs  of  sense;  (4)  the  circumstances  under  which  objects  ap- 
pear ;  (5)  the  relative  positions,  intervals,  and  places ;  (6)  inter- 
mixtures ;  (7)  the  quantities  and  modifications  of  the  objects  we 
perceive ;  (8)  relations;  (9)  the  frequent  or  rare  occurrence;  (10) 
the  difi'erent  ways  of  life,  the  varieties  of  customs  and  laws,  the 
mythical  representations  and  dogmatic  opinions  of  men. 

2.  The  New  Academy. — Scepticism,  in  its  conflict  with  the 
Stoics,  as  it  appeared  in  the  Platonic  school  established  by  Ar- 
cesilaus  (316-241),  has  a  far  greater  significance  than  belongs  to 
the  performances  of  the  Pyrrhonists.  In  this  school  Scepticism 
sought  its  support  by  its  great  respect  for  the  writings  and  its 
transmission  of  the  oral  teachings  of  Plato.  Arcesilaus  could 
neither  have  assumed  nor  maintained  the  chair  of  instruction  in 
the  Academy,  had  he  not  carefully  cherished  and  imparted  to  his 
disciples  the  impression  that  his  own  view,  respecting  the  with- 
holding of  a  decisive  judgment,  coincided  essentially  with  that  of 
Socrates  and  of  Plato,  and  if  he  had  not  also  taught  that  he  only 
restored  the  genuine  and  original  significance  of  Platonism,  when 
he  set  aside  the  dogmatic  method  of  teaching.  An  immediate 
incitement  to  the  efl"orts  of  Arcesilaus  is  found  in  his  opposition 
to  the  rigid  dogmatic  system  which  had  lately  arisen  in  the  Porch, 
and  which  claimed  to  be  in  every  respect  an  improvement  upon 
Platonism.  Hence,  as  Cicero  remarks,  Arcesilaus  directed  all  his 
sceptical  and  polemic  attacks  against  Zeno,  the  founder  of  Stoicism, 
lie  granted  with  his  opponent  that  no  representation  should  form 
a  part  of  undoubted  knowledge,  if  it  could  possibly  have  arisen 
through  any  other  object  than  that  from  which  it  actually  sprung, 
but  he  would  not  admit  that  there  might  be  a  notion  which  ex- 


SCEPTICISM  AND  THE  NEW  ACADEMY. 


15] 


pressed  so  truly  and  accurately  its  own  object,  that  it  could  not 
nave  arisen  from  any  other.  Accordingly,  Arcesilaus  denied  the 
existence  of  a  criterion  which  could  certify  to  us  the  truth  of  our 
knowledge.  If  there  he  any  truth  in  our  affirmations,  said  he,  we 
cannot  be  certain  of  it.  In  this  sense  he  taught  that  one  can 
know  nothing,  not  even  that  he  does  know  nothing.  But  in  moral 
matters,  in  choosing  the  good  and  rejecting  the  evil,  he  taught 
that  we  should  follow  that  which  is  probable. 

Of  the  subsequent  leaders  in  the  new  Academy,  Garneades 
(214-129)  alone  need  here  be  mentioned,  whose  whole  philosophy, 
however,  consists  almost  exclusively  in  a  polemic  against  Stoicism 
and  in  the  attempt  to  set  up  a  criterion  of  truth.  His  positive 
performance  is  the  attempt  to  bring  out  a  philosophical  theory  of 
probabilities.  The  later  Academicians  fell  back  to  an  eclectic 
dogmaticism, 

3-  The  later  Scepticism. — Once  more  we  meet  with  a  pe- 
culiar Scepticism  at  the  time  when  Grecian  philosophy  had  wholly 
fallen  to  decay.  To  this  time  belong  ^nesidemus,  who  probably 
— though  this  cannot  be  affirmed  with  certainty — lived  but  a  little 
after  Cicero  ;  Agrippa,  whose  date  is  also  uncertain,  though  sub- 
sequent to  ^nesidemus,  and  Seztiis  Empiricus — i.  e.  a  Grecian 
physician  of  the  empiric  sect,  who  probably  flourished  in  the  first 
half  of  the  third  century  of  the  Christian  era.  These  are  the 
most  significant  names.  Of  these  the  last  has  the  greatest  interest 
for  us,  from  two  writings  which  he  left  behind  him  (the  hypoty- 
poses  of  Pyrrho  in  three  books,  and  a  treatise  against  the  mathe- 
maticians in  nine  books),  which  are  sources  of  much  historical 
information.  In  these  he  has  profusely  collected  every  thing 
which  the  Scepticism  of  the  ancients  knew  how  to  advance  against 
the  certainty  of  knowledge. 


152 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


SECTION  XX. 

THE  ROMANS. 

The  Romans  have  taken  no  independent  part  in  tl  t  progress  of 
philosophy.  After  Grecian  philosophy  and  literature  had  begun 
to  gain  a  foothold  among  them,  and  especially  after  three  dis- 
tinguished representatives  of  Attic  culture  and  eloquence — 
Carneades  the  Academician,  Critolaus  the  Peripatetic,  and  Dio- 
genes the  Stoic — ^had  appeared  in  Rome  as  envoys  from  Athens ; 
and  after  Greece,  a  few  years  later,  had  become  a  Roman  province, 
and  thus  outwardly  in  a  close  connection  with  Rome,  almost  all 
the  more  significant  systems  of  Grecian  philosophy,  especially  the 
Epicurean  (Lucretius),  and  the  Stoic  (Seneca),  flourished  and 
found  adherents  in  Rome,  though  without  gaining  any  real  philo- 
sophical progress.  The  Romish  philosophizing  is  wholly  eclectic, 
as  is  seen  in  Cicero,  the  most  important  and  influential  philosophic 
writer  among  the  Romans.  But  the  popular  philosophy  of  this 
man  and  of  the  minds  akin  to  him  cannot  be  strongly  assailed,  for, 
notwithstanding  its  want  of  originality  and  logical  sequence,  it 
gave  philosophy  a  broad  dissemination,  and  made  it  a  means  of 
universal  culture. 


SECTION  XXI. 

NEW  PLATONISM. 

In  New  Platonism,  the  ancient  mind  made  its  last  and  altmosfc 
despairing  attempt  at  a  philosophy  which  should  resolve  the  dual- 
ism between  the  subjective  and  the  objective.  The  attempt  was 
made  by  taking  on  the  one  side  a  subjective  stand-point,  like  the 
other  philosophies  of  the  post-Aristotelian  time  {cf.  §  XVI  7) ; 


NEW  PLATONISM. 


153 


and  on  the  other  with  the  design  to  bring  out  objective  determi- 
nations concerning  the  highest  conceptions  of  metaphysics,  and 
concerning  the  absolute ;  in  other  words,  to  sketch  a  system  of 
absolute  philosophy.  In  this  respect  the  effort  was  made  to  copy 
the  Platonic  and  Aristotelian  philosophy,  and  the  claim  was  set 
up  by  the  new  system  to  be  a  revival  of  the  original  Platonism. 
On  both  sides  the  new  attempt  formed  the  closing  period  of  an 
ancient  philosophy.  It  represents  the  last  struggle,  but  at  the 
same  time  the  exhaustion  of  the  ancient  thinking  and  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  old  philosophy. 

The  first,  and  also  the  most  important,  representative  of  New 
Platonism,  is  Plotinus.  He  was  a  pupil  of  Ammonius  Saccas, 
who  taught  the  Platonic  philosophy  at  Alexandria  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  third  century,  though  he  left  no  writings  behind  him. 
Plotinus  (A.  D.  205 — 270)  from  his  fortieth  year  taught  philoso- 
phy at  Rome.  His  opinions  are  contained  in  a  course  of  hastily 
written  and  not  closely  connected  treatises,  which,  after  his  death, 
were  collected  and  published  in  six  enneads  by  Porphyry  (who 
was  born  A.  D.  233,  and  taught  both  philosophy  and  eloquence  at 
Rome),  his  most  noted  disciple.  From  Rome  and  Alexandria, 
the  New  Platonism  of  Plotinus  passed  over  in  the  fourth  century 
to  Athens,  where  it  established  itself  in  the  Academy.  In  the 
fourth  century,  Jamhlichus^  a  scholar  of  Porphyry,  and  in  the 
fifth,  Proclus,  (412 — 485),  were  prominently  distinguished  among 
the  New  Platonists.  With  the  triumph  of  Christianity  and  the 
consequent  fall  of  heathenism,  in  the  course  of  the  sixth  century, 
even  this  last  bloom  of  Grrecian  philosophy  faded  away. 

The  common  characteristic  of  all  the  New  Platonists  is  a  ten- 
dency to  mysticism,  theosophy,  and  theurgy.  The  majority  of 
them  gave  themselves  up  to  magic  and  sorcery,  and  the  most  dis- 
tinguished boasted  that  they  were  the  subjects  of  divine  inspira- 
tion and  illumination,  able  to  look  into  the  future,  and  to  work 
miracles.  They  professed  to  be  hierophants  as  much  ^s  philoso- 
phers, and  exhibited  the  unmistakable  tendency  to  represent  a 
Pagan  copy  of  Christianity,  which  should  be  at  the  same  time  a 
7* 


154 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


philosophy  and  a  universal  religion.  In  the  following  sketch  of 
New  Platonism  we  follow  mainly  the  track  of  Plotinus. 

1.  Ecstasy  as  a  Subjective  state. — The  result  of  the  philo- 
sophical strivings  antecedent  to  New  Platonism  had  been  Scepti- 
cism ;  which,  seeing  the  impracticability  of  both  the  Stoic  and 
Epicurean  wisdom,  had  assumed  a  totally  negative  relation  to 
every  positive  and  theoretical  content.  But  the  end  which  Scep- 
ticism had  actually  gained  was  the  opposite  of  that  for  which  it 
had  striven.  It  had  striven  for  the  perfect  apathy  of  the  sage, 
but  it  had  gained  only  the  necessity  of  incessantly  opposing  every 
positive  affirmation.  Instead  of  the  rest  which  they  had  sought, 
they  found  rather  an  absolute  unrest.  This  absolute  unrest  of 
the  consciousness  striving  after  an  absolute  rest,  begat  immediate- 
ly a  longing  to  be  freed  from  this  unrest,  a  longing  after  some 
content  which  should  be  absolutely  satisfying,  and  stripped  of 
every  sceptical  objection.  This  longing  after  an  absolutely  true, 
found  its  historical  expression  in  New  Platonism.  The  subject 
sought  to  master  and  comprehend  the  absolute ;  and  this,  neither 
by  objective  knowledge  nor  dialectic  mediation,  but  immediately, 
by  an  inner  and  mystical  mounting  up  of  the  subject  in  the  form 
of  an  immediate  beholding,  or  ecstasy.  The  knowledge  of  the 
true,  says  Plotinus,  is  not  gained  by  proof  nor  by  any  mediation ; 
it  cannot  be  found  when  the  objects  known  remain  separate  from 
the  subject  knowing,  but  only  when  the  distinction  between  know- 
er  and  known  disappears ;  it  is  a  beholding  of  the  reason  in  itself, 
not  in  the  sense  that  we  see  the  reason,  but  the  reason  beholds 
itself;  in  no  other  way  can  knowledge  come.  If  any  one  has  at- 
tained to  such  a  beholding,  to  such  a  true  unison  with  the  divine, 
he  will  despise  the  pure  thinking  which  he  otherwise  loved,  for 
this  thinking  was  only  a  movement  which  presupposed  a  difference 
between  the  pcrceiver  and  the  perceived.  This  mystical  absorp- 
tion into  the  Deity,  or,  the  One,  this  resolving  the  self  into  the 
absolute,  is  that  which  gives  to  New  Platonism  a  character  so. pe- 
culiarly distinct  from  the  genuine  Grecian  systems  of  philosophy. 

2.  The  Cosmical  Principles. — The  doctrine  of  the  three 
cosmical  principles  is  most  closely  connected  with  the  theory  just 


NEW  PLATONISM. 


155 


named.  To  the  two  cosmical  principles  already  received,  viz.,  the 
world-soul  and  the  world-reason,  a  third  and  higher  one  was  added 
by  the  New  Platonists.  For  if  the  reason  apprehends  the  true  by 
means  of  thinking,  and  not  within  itself  alone ;  if,  in  order  to  grasp 
the  absolute  and  behold  the  divine,  it  must  lose  its  own  self-con- 
Bciousness,  and  go  out  beyond  itself,  then  reason  cannot  be  the  high- 
est principle,  but  there  stands  above  it  that  primal  essence,  with 
which  it  must  be  united  if  it  will  behold  the  true.  To  this  pri- 
mal essence  Plotinus  gives  different  names,  as  "  the  first,"  "  the 
one,"  "  the  good,"  and  "  that  which  stands  above  being  "  (being 
is  with  him  but  a  conception,  which,  like  the  reason,  may  be  re- 
solved into  a  higher  ground,  and  which,  united  with  the  reason, 
forms  but  the  second  step  in  the  series  of  highest  conceptions).  In 
all  these  names,  Plotinus  does  not  profess  to  have  satisfactorily 
expressed  the  essence  of  this  primal  one,  but  only  to  have  given  a 
representation  of  it.  In  characterizing  it  still  farther,  he  denies  it 
all  thinking  and  willing,  because  it  needs  nothing  and  can  desire 
nothing ;  it  is  not  energy,  but  above  energy ;  life  does  not  belong 
to  it ;  neither  being  nor  essence  nor  any  of  the  most  general  cate- 
gories of  being  can  be  ascribed  to  it ;  in  short,  it  is  that  which  can 
neither  be  expressed  nor  thought.  Plotinus  has  thoroughly 
striven  to  think  of  this  first  principle  not  as  first  principle,  i.  e. 
not  in  its  relation  to  that  of  which  it  is  the  ground,  but  only  in 
itself,  as  being  wholly  without  reference  either  to  us  or  to  any  thing 
else.  This  pure  abstraction,  however,  he  could  not  carry  out.  He 
sets  himself  to  show  how  every  thing  else,  and  especially  the  two 
other  cosmical  principles,  could  emanate  from  this  first ;  but  in 
order  to  have  a  principle  for  his  emanation  theory,  he  was  obliged 
to  consider  the  first  in  its  relation  to  the  second  and  as  its  pro- 
ducer 

3.  The  Emanation  Theory  of  the  New  Platonists. — Every 
emanation  theory,  and  hence  also  that  of  the  New  Platonists,  con- 
siders the  world  as  the  effluence  of  God,  and  gives  to  the  emana- 
tion a  greater  or  less  degree  of  perfection,  according  as  it  is 
nearer  or  more  remote  from  its  source.  They  all  have  for  their 
principle  the  totality  of  being,  and  represent  a  progressively 


156 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


ascending  relation  in  its  several  parts.  Fire,  says  Plotinus, 
emits  heat,  snow  cold,  fragrant  bodies  odors,  and  every  organic 
thing  so  far  as  it  is  perfect  begets  something  like  itself.  In  the 
same  way  the  all-perfect  and  the  eternal,  in  the  overflowing  of  his 
perfection  sends  out  from  himself  that  which  is  also  eternal,  and 
after  him,  the  best,  viz.,  the  reason  or  world-intelligence,  which  is 
the  immediate  reflection  and  image  of  the  primal  one.  Plotinus 
abounds  in  figures  to  show  how  the  primal  one  need  lose  nothing 
^s  become  weakened  by  this  emanation  of  reason.  Next  to  the 
original  one,  reason  is  the  most  perfect.  It  contains  in  itself  the 
ideal  world,  and  the  whole  of  true  and  changeless  being.  Some 
*otion  may  be  formed  of  its  exaltation  and  glory  by  carefully  be- 
A)lding  the  sensible  world  in  its  greatness,  its  beauty,  and  the  order 
of  its  ceaseless  motion,  and  then  by  rising  to  contemplate  its 
archetype  in  the  pure  and  changeless  being  of  the  intelligible 
#orld,  and  then  by  recognizing  in  intelligence  the  author  and 
finisher  of  all.  In  it  there  is  neither  past  nor  future,  but  only  an 
over  abiding  present.  It  is,  moreover,  as  incapable  of  division  in 
•^ace  as  of  change  in  time.  It  is  the  true  eternity,  which  is  only 
0opied  by  time.  As  reason  flows  from  the  primal  one,  so  does  the 
•^rld-soul  eternally  emanate  from  reason,  though  the  latter  in- 
^rs  no  change  thereby.  The  world-soul  is  the  copy  of  reason, 
l»ermeated  by  it,  and  actualizing  it  in  an  outer  world.  It  gives 
ideas  externally  to  sensible  matter,  which  is  the  last  and  lowest 
step  in  the  series  of  emanations  and  in  itself  is  undetermined,  and 
has  neither  quality  nor  being.  In  this  way  the  visible  universe 
is  but  the  transcript  of  the  world-soul,  which  forms  it  out  of  mat- 
ter, permeates  and  animates  it,  and  carries  it  forward  in  a  circle. 
Here  closes  the  series  of  emanations,  and,  as  was  the  aim  of  the 
theory,  we  have  been  carried  in  a  constant  current  from  the  high- 
est to  the  lowest,  from  Grod  to  the  mere  image  of  true  being,  or 
the  sensible  world. 

Individual  souls,  like  the  world-soul,  are  linked  both  to  the 
higher  and  the  lower,  to  reason  and  the  sensible ;  now  bound  with 
the  latter  and  sharing  its  destiny,  and  anon  rising  to  their  source 
in  reason.    Their  original  and  proper  home  was  in  the  rational 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  SCHOLASTICISM. 


157 


world,  from  whence  tliej  have  come  down,  each  one  in  its  proper 
time,  into  the  corporeal;  not,  however,  wholly  forsaking  their  ideal 
abode,  but  as  a  sunbeam  touches  at  the  same  time  the  sun  and  the 
earth,  so  are  they  found  alike  in  the  world  of  reason  and  the 
world  of  sense.  Our  calling,  therefore — and  here  we  come  back 
to  the  point  from  which  we  started  in  our  exhibition  of  New  Pla- 
tonism — can  only  be  to  direct  our  senses  and  aspirations  towards 
our  proper  home,  in  the  ideal  world,  and  by  asceticism  and  cruci- 
fying of  the  flesh,  to  free  our  better  self  from  its  participation  with 
the  body.  But  when  our  soul  has  once  mounted  up  to  the  ideal 
world,  that  image  of  the  originally  good  and  beautiful,  it  then 
attains  the  final  goal  of  all  its  longings  and  efibrts,  the  immediate 
union  with  God,  through  the  enraptured  beholding  of  the  primal 
one  in  which  it  loses  its  consciousness  and  becomes  buried  and 
absorbed. 

According  to  all  this,  the  New  Platonic  philosophy  would  seem 
to  be  a  monism,  and  thus  the  most  perfect  development  of  ancient 
philosophy,  in  so  far  as  this  had  striven  to  carry  back  the  sum  of 
all  being  to  one  ultimate  ground.  But  as  it  attained  its  highest 
principle  from  which  all  the  rest  was  derived,  by  means  of  ecstasy, 
by  a  mystical  self-destruction  of  the  individual  person  (Ichheit), 
by  asceticism  and  theurgy,  and  not  by  means  of  self-conscious 
thinking,  nor  by  any  natural  or  rational  way,  it  is  seen  that 
ancient  philosophy,  instead  of  becoming  perfected  in  New  Platon- 
ism,  only  makes  a  despairing  leap  beyond  itself  to  its  own  self- 
destruction. 


SECTION  XXII. 

CHKISTIANITY  AND  SCHOLASTICISM. 

1.  The  Christian  Idea. — The  Grecian  intellectual  life  at  the 
time  of  its  fairest  bloom,  was  characterized  by  the  immediate 
sacrifice  of  the  subject  to  the  object  (nature,  the  state,  &c.) :  the 
full  breach  between  the  two,  between  spirit  and  nature,  had  not 


158 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


yet  arrived;  the  subject  had  not  yet  so  far  reflected  upon  him- 
self that  he  could  apprehend  his  own  absolute  worth.  This  breach 
came  in,  with  the  decay  of  Grecian  life,  in  the  time  after  Alexan- 
der the  Great.  As  the  objective  world  lost  its  influence,  the 
thinking  consciousness  turned  back  upon  itself;  but  even  in  this 
very  process,  the  bridge  between  subject  and  object  was  broken 
down.  The  self-consciousness  had  not  yet  become  sufficiently 
absorbed  in  itself  to  look  upon  the  true,  the  divine,  in  any  other 
light  than  as  separate  from  itself,  and  belonging  to  an  opposite 
world ;  while  a  feeling  of  pain,  of  unsatisfied  desire,  took  the  place 
of  that  fair  unity  between  spirit  and  nature  which  had  been  pecu- 
liar to  the  better  periods  of  the  Grecian  civil  and  artistic  life. 
New  Platonism,  by  its  overleaping  speculation,  and,  practically, 
by  its  mortification  of  the  sense,  made  a  last  and  despairing  at- 
tempt to  overcome  this  separation,  or  to  bury  itself  within  it,  by 
bringing  the  two  sides  forcibly  together.  The  attempt  was  in 
vain,  and  the  old  philosophy,  totally  exhausted,  came  to  its  end. 
Dualism  is  therefore  the  rock  on  which  it  split.  This  problem, 
thus  left  without  a  solution,  Christianity  took  up.  It  assumed  for 
its  principle  the  idea  which  the  ancient  thinking  had  not  known 
how  to  carry  out,  affirming  that  the  separation  between  God  and 
man  might  be  overcome,  and  that  the  human  and  the  divine  could 
be  united  in  one.  The  speculative  fundamental  idea  of  Chris- 
tianity is,  that  God  has  become  incarnate,  and  this  had  its  practi- 
cal exhibition  (for  Christianity  was  a  practical  religion)  in  the  idea 
of  the  atonement  and  the  demand  of  the  new  birth,  i.  e.  the  posi- 
tive purifying  of  the  sense  from  its  corruptions,  instead  of  hold- 
ing it,  as  asceticism,  in  a  merely  negative  relation. 

From  the  introduction  of  Christianity,  monism  has  been  the 
character  and  the  fundamental  tendency  of  the  whole  modern 
philosophy.  In  fact,  the  new  philosophy  started  from  the  very  point 
at  which  the  old  had  stood  still.  The  turning  of  the  self-con- 
sciousness upon  itself,  which  was  the  stand-point  of  the  post- Aris- 
totelian speculations,  forms  in  Descartes  the  starting-point  of  the 
new  philosophy,  whose  whole  course  has  been  the  reconciling  of 
that  opposition  beyond  which  the  old  could  not  pass. 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  SCHOLASTICISM. 


159 


2.  Scholasticism. — It  very  early  resulted  that  Christianity 
came  in  contact  with  the  cotemporaneous  philosophy,  especially 
with  Platonism.  This  arose  first  with  the  apologists  of  the  second 
century,  and  the  fathers  of  the  Alexandrian  church.  Subse- 
quently, in  the  ninth  century,  Scotus  Erigena  made  an  attempt 
to  combine  Christianity  with  New  Platonism,  though  it  was  not 
till  the  second  half  of  the  Middle  Ages,  from  the  eleventh  century, 
that  there  was  developed  any  thing  that  might  be  properly  termed 
a  Christian  philosophy.    This  was  the  so-called  Scholasticism. 

The  effort  of  Scholasticism  was  to  mediate  between  the  dogma 
of  religion  and  the  reflecting  self- consciousness ;  to  reconcile  faith 
and  knowledge.  When  the  dogma  passed  over  into  the  schools 
from  the  Church  which  had  given  it  utterance,  and  theology  be- 
came a  science  of  the  universities,  the  scientific  interest  asserted 
its  rights,  and  undertook  to  bring  the  dogma  which  had  hitherto 
stood  over  against  the  self-consciousness  as  an  external  power, 
into  a  closer  relation  to  the  thinking  subject.  A  series  of  attempts 
was  now  made  to  bring  out  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  in  the 
form  of  scientific  systems  (the  first  complete  dogmatic  system  was 
given  by  Peter  Lombard,  who  died  1164,  in  his  four  books  of 
sentences,  and  was  voluminously  commented  upon  by  the  later 
Scholastics),  all  starting  from  the  indisputable  premise  (beyond 
which  scholastic  thinking  never  reached),  that  the  faith  of  the 
church  is  absolute  truth ;  but  all  guided  likewise  by  the  interest 
to  make  this  revealed  truth  intelligible,  and  to  show  it  to  be  ra- 
tional. "  Credo  ut  intelligam^'' — this  expression  of  Anselm,  the 
beginner  and  founder  of  Scholasticism  (he  was  born  about  1031, 
and  made  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  in  1093),  was  the  watchword 
of  this  whole  direction.  Scholasticism  applied  to  the  solution  of 
its  problem  the  most  remarkable  logical  acumen,  and  brought  out 
systems  of  doctrine  like  the  Grothic  cathedrals  in  their  architec- 
ture. The  extended  study  of  Aristotle,  called  par  eminence 
"  the  philosopher,"  whom  many  of  the  most  distinguished  Scholas- 
tics wrote  commentaries  upon,  and  who  was  greatly  studied  at  the 
same  period  among  the  Arabians  (Avicenna  and  Averroes),  fur- 
nished their  terminology  and  most  of  their  points  of  view.  At 


160 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


the  summit  of  Scholasticism  we  must  place  the  two  incontestable 
greatest  masters  of  the  Scholastic  art  and  method,  Thomas 
Aquinas  (Dominican,  who  died  1274)  and  Duns  Scotus  (Fran- 
ciscan, who  died  1308),  the  founders  of  two  schools,  in  which  since 
their  time  the  whole  Scholastic  theology  divides  itself — the  former 
exalting  the  understanding  (intellectus),  and  the  latter  the  will 
(voluntas)^  as  their  highest  principle,  both  being  driven  into  essen- 
tially differing  directions  by  this  opposition  of  a  theoretical  and  a 
practical  principle.  Even  with  this  began  the  downfall  of 
Scholasticism;  its  highest  point  was  also  the  turning-point  to  its 
self-destruction.  The  rationality  of  the  dogma,  the  oneness  of 
faith  and  knowledge,  had  been  constantly  their  fundamental  pre- 
mise; but  this  premise  fell  away,  and  the  whole  basis  of  their 
metaphysics  was  given  up  in  principle,  the  moment  Duns  Scotus 
placed  the  problem  of  theology  in  the  practical.  When  the  prac- 
tical and  the  theoretical  became  divided,  and  still  more  when 
thought  and  being  were  separated  by  Nominalism  {cf.  3),  philos- 
9phy  broke  loose  from  theology  and  knowledge  from  faith ;  knowl- 
edge assumed  its  position  above  faith  and  above  authoiity  (modern 
philosophy),  and  the  religious  consciousness  broke  with  the  tra- 
ditional dogma  (the  Keformation). 

3.  Nominalism  and  Kealism. — Hand  in  hand  with  the  whole 
development  of  Scholasticism,  there  was  developed  the  opposition 
between  Nominalism  and  Realism,  an  opposition  whose  origin  is 
to  be  found  in  the  relation  of  Scholasticism  to  the  Platonic  and 
Aristotelian  philosophy.  The  Nominalists  were  those  who  held 
that  the  conceptions  of  the  universal  (the  universalia)  were 
simple  names,  flatus  vocis,  representations  without  content  and 
without  reality.  According  to  them  there  are  no  universal  con- 
ceptions, no  species,  no  class ;  every  thing  which  is,  exists  only 
as  separate  in  its  pure  individuality  ;  there  is,  therefore,  no  pure 
thinking,  but  only  a  representation  and  sensuous  perception.  The 
Realists,  on  the  other  hand,  taking  pattern  from  Plato,  held  fast 
to  the  objective  reality  of  the  universals  {universalia  ante  rem). 
These  opposite  directions  appeared  first  between  Boscellinus,  who 
took  the  side  of  Nominalism,  and  Ansehn,  who  advocated  the 


TRANSITION  TO  THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 


161 


Realistic  theory,  and  it  is  seen  from  this  time  through  the  whole 
period  of  Scholasticism,  though  from  the  age  of  Ahelard  (born 
1079)  a  middle  view,  which  was  both  Nominalistic  and  Realistic, 
held  with  some  slight  modifications  the  prominent  place  {univer- 
salia  in  re).  According  to  this  view  the  universal  is  only  some- 
thing thought  and  represented,  though  as  such  it  is  not  simply  a 
product  of  the  representing  consciousness,  but  has  also  its  objective 
reality  in  objects  themselves,  from  which  it  was  argued  we  could 
not  abstract  it  if  it  were  not  essentially  contained  in  them.  This 
identity  of  thought  and  being,  is  the  fundamental  premise  on 
which  the  whole  dialectic  course  of  the  Scholastics  rests.  All 
their  arguments  are  founded  on  the  claim,  that  that  which  has 
been  syllogistically  proved  is  in  reality  the  same  as  in  logical 
thinking.  If  this  premise  is  overthrown,  so  falls  with  it  the  whole 
basis  of  Scholasticism ;  and  there  remains  nothing  more  for  the 
thinker  to  do,  who  has  gone  astray  in  his  objectivity,  but  to  fall 
back  upon  himself.  This  self-dissolution  of  Scholasticism  actually 
appears  with  William  of  Occam  (died  1347),  the  most  influential 
reviver  of  that  Nominalism  which  had  been  so  mighty  in  the 
beginning  of  Scholasticism,  but  which  now,  more  victorious 
against  a  decaying  than  then  against  a  rising  form  of  culture, 
plucked  away  its  foundation  from  the  framework  of  Scholastic 
dogmatism,  and  brought  the  whole  structure  into  inevitable  rui». 


SECTION  XXIII. 

TKANSITION  TO  THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

The  emancipation  of  modern  philosophy  from  the  bondage  of 
Scholasticism  was  a  gradual  process.  It  first  showed  itself  in  a 
series  of  preparative  movements  during  the  fifteenth  century,  and 
became  perfected,  negatively,  in  the  course  of  the  sixteenth,  and 
positively  in  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

1.  Fall  of  Scholasticism. — The  immediate  ground  of  this 


162 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


clianged  direction  of  the  time,  we  have  already  seen  in  the  innei 
decay  of  Scholasticism  itself.  Just  so  soon  as  the  fundamental 
premise  on  which  the  Scholastic  theology  and  method  rested,  the 
rationality  of  the  dogma,  was  abandoned,  the  whole  structure,  as 
already  remarked,  fell  to  inevitable  ruin.  The  conviction,  directly 
opposed  to  the  principle  of  Scholasticism,  that  what  might  be 
true  dogmatically,  might  be  false,  or,  at  least,  incapable  of  proof 
in  the  eye  of  the  reason — a  point  of  view  from  which  e.  g.  the 
Aristotelian  Pomponatius  (1462-1530)  treated  the  doctrines  of 
the  future  state,  and  in  whose  light  Vanini  subsequently  went 
over  the  chief  problems  of  philosophy — kept  gaining  ground,  not- 
withstanding the  opposition  of  the  Church,  and  even  associated 
with  itself  the  opinion  that  reason  and  revelation  could  not  be 
harmonized.  The  feeling  became  prevalent  that  philosophy  must 
be  freed  from  its  previous  condition  of  minority  and  servitude ;  a 
struggle  after  a  greater  independence  of  philosophic  investigation 
was  awakened,  and  though  no  one  yet  ventured  to  attack  directly 
the  doctrine  of  the  Church,  the  effort  was  made  to  shatter  the 
confidence  in  the  chief  bulwark  of  Scholasticism,  the  Aristotelian 
philosophy,  or  what  at  that  period  was  regarded  as  such ;  (especially 
in  this  connection  Peter  Ramus,  (1515-1572)  should  be  men- 
tioned, who  fell  in  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew).  The 
authority  of  the  Church  became  more  and  more  weakened  in  the 
faith  of  the  people,  and  the  great  principles  of  Scholasticism  came 
to  an  end. 

2.  The  Eesults  of  Scholasticism. — Notwithstanding  all. 
Scholasticism  was  not  without  its  positively  good  results.  Though 
standing  wholly  in  the  service  of  the  Church,  it  had,  nevertheless, 
grown  out  of  a  scientific  impulse,  and  so  naturally  awakened  a  free 
spirit  of  inquiry  and  a  sense  for  knowledge.  It  made  the  objects 
of  faith  the  objects  of  thought,  it  raised  men  from  the  sphere  of 
unconditional  faith  to  the  sphere  of  doubt,  of  investigation  and 
of  knowledge,  and  by  its  very  effort  to  demonstrate  the  principles 
of  theology  it  established,  though  against  its  knowledge  and  de- 
sign, the  authority  of  reason.  It  thus  introduced  to  the  world 
another  principle  than  that  of  the  old  Church,  the  principle  of  the 


TRANSITION  TO  THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.  163 


thinking  spirit,  tlie  self-consciousness  of  the  reason,  or  at  least 
prepared  the  way  for  the  victory  of  this  principle.  Even  the  de- 
formities and  unfavorable  side  of  Scholasticism,  the  many  absurd 
questions  upon  which  the  Scholastics  divided,  even  their  thousand- 
fold unnecessary  and  accidental  distinctions,  their  inquisitiveness 
and  subtleties,  all  sprang  from  a  rational  principle,  and  grew  out 
of  a  spirit  of  investigation,  which  could  only  utter  itself  in  this 
way  under  the  all  powerful  ecclesiastical  spirit  of  the  time.  Only 
when  it  was  surpassed  by  the  advancing  spirit  of  the  age,  did 
Scholasticism,  falsifying  its  original  meaning,  make  common  cause 
and  interest  with  the  old  ecclesiasticism,  and  turned  itself  as  the 
most  violent  opposer  against  the  improvements  of  the  new  period. 

3.  The  Revival  of  Letters. — The  revival  of  classic  litera-  ^ 
ture  contributed  prominently  to  that  change  in  the  spirit  of  the 
age  which  marks  the  beginning  of  the  new  epoch  of  philosophy. 
The  study  of  the  ancients,  especially  of  the  Greeks,  had  almost 
-  wholly  ceased  in  the  course  of  the  Middle  Ages ;  even  the  philoso- 
phy of  Plato  and  Aristotle  was  known,  for  the  most  part,  only 
through  Latin  translations  or  secondary  sources ;  no  one  realized 
the  spirit  of  classic  life,  and  all  sense  for  beauty  of  form  and  ele- 
gant composition  had  passed  away.  The  change  was  chiefly 
brought  about  by  means  of  the  Greek  scholars  who  fled  from  Con- 
stantinople to  Italy ;  the  study  of  the  ancients  in  the  original 
soui'ces  came  up  again ;  the  newly  discovered  art  of  printing 
allowed  the  classics  to  be  widely  circulated ;  the  Medicis  drew 
classic  scholars  to  their  court ;  all  this  working  for  a  far  better 
understanding  of  the  ancient  philosophy.  Besarion  (died  1472) 
and  Ficinus  (died  1499)  were  prominent  in  this  movement.  The 
result  was  presently  seen.  The  new  scholars  contended  against 
the  stiff  and  uncouth  manner  in  which  the  sciences  had  hitlierto 
been  treated,  new  ideas  began  to  circulate,  and  there  arose  again 
the  free,  universal,  thinking  spirit  of  antiquity.  In  Germany, 
also,  classic  studies  found  a  fruitful  soil.  Beuchlin  (born  1454), 
Melanctlion  and  Erasmus^  labored  in  this  sense,  and  the  classic 
movement,  hostile  as  it  was  to  the  Scholastic  impulse,  favored 
most  decidedly  the  growing  tendencies  to  the  Reformation. 


164 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


4.  The  German  Reformation. — All  the  elements  of  the  new 
age,  the  struggle  against  Scholasticism,  the  revival  of  letters  and 
the  more  enlarged  culture  thus  secured,  the  striving  after  national 
independence,  the  attempts  of  the  state  to  free  itself  from  the 
Church  and  the  hierarchy,  and  above  all,  the  desire  of  the  think- 
ing self- consciousness  for  autonomy,  for  freedom  from  the  fetters 
of  authority — all  these  elements  found  their  focus  and  point  of 
union  in  the  German  Reformation.  Though  having  its  root  at  first 
in  practical,  and  religious,  and  national  interests,  and  expending 
itself  mainly  upon  the  Christian  doctrine  and  Church,  yet  was  the 
Reformation  in  principle  and  in  its  true  consequences  a  rupture  of 
the  thinking  spirit  with  authority,  a  protesting  against  the  fetters 
of  the  positive,  a  return  of  the  mind  from  its  self-estrangement  to 
itself.  From  that  which  was  without,  the  mind  now  came  back  to 
that  which  is  within,  and  the  purely  human  as  such,  the  individual 
heart  and  conscience,  the  subjective  conviction,  in  a  word,  the 
rights  of  the  subject  now  began  to  be  of  worth.  While  marriage 
had  formerly  been  regarded,  though  not  immoral,  as  yet  inferior  to 
continence  and  celibacy,  it  appeared  now  as  a  divine  institution,  a 
natural  law  ordained  of  God.  While  poverty  had  formerly  been 
esteemed  higher  than  wealth,  and  the  contemplative  life  of  the 
monk  was  superior  to  the  manual  labor  of  the  layman  supporting 
himself  by  his  own  toil,  yet  now  poverty  ceased  to  be  desirable  in 
itself,  and  labor  was  no  longer  despised.  Ecclesiastical  freedom 
took  the  place  of  spiritual  bondage ;  monasticism  and  the  priest- 
hood lost  their  power.  In  the  same  way,  on  the  side  of  knowl- 
edge the  individual  man  came  back  to  himself,  and  threw  off  the 
restraints  of  authority.  He  was  impressed  with  the  conviction 
that  the  whole  process  of  redemption  must  be  experienced  within 
himself,  that  his  reconciliation  to  God  and  salvation  was  his  own 
concern,  for  which  he  needed  no  mediation  of  priests,  and  that  hej 
Btood  in  an  immediate  relation  to  God.  He  found  his  whole  being 
in  his  faith,  in  the  depth  of  his  feelings  and  convictions. 

Since  thus  Protestantism  sprang  from  the  essence  of  the  samoj 
iSpirit  in  which  modern  philosophy  had  its  birth,  the  two  have  thej 
closest  relation  to  each  other,  though  of  course  there  is  a  specific 


TRANSITION  TO  THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.  165 

difference  between  the  religious  and  the  scientific  principle.  Yet 
in  their  origin,  both  kinds  of  Protestantism,  that  of  religion  and 
that  of  thought,  are  one  and  the  same,  and  in  their  progress  they 
have  also  gone  hand  in  hand  together.  For  religion,  reduced  to 
its  simple  elements,  will  be  found  to  have  its  source,  like  philoso- 
phy, in  the  self-knowledge  of  the  reason. 

5.  The  Advancement  of  the  Natural  Sciences. — To  all 
these  phenomena,  which  should  be  regarded  both  as  causes  and 
as  symptoms  of  the  intellectual  revolution  of  this  period,  we  must 
add  yet  another,  which  essentially  facilitated  and  gave  a  positive 
assistance  to  the  freedom  of  the  mind  from  the  fetters  of  authority 
— the  starting  up  of  the  natural  sciences  and  the  inductive  method 
of  examining  nature.  This  epoch  was  a  period  of  the  most  fruit- 
ful and  influential  discoveries  in  nature.  The  discovery  of  Ame- 
rica and  the  passage  to  the  East  Indies  had  already  widened  the 
circle  of  view,  but  still  greater  revolutions  are  connected  with  the 
name  of  a  Copernicus  (died  1543),  Kepler  (died  1630),  and  Ga- 
lileo (died  1642),  revolutions  which  could  not  remain,  without  an 
influence  upon  the  whole  mode  of  thinking  of  that  age,  and  which 
contributed  prominently  to  break  the  faith  in  the  prevailing  eccle- 
siastical authority.  Scholasticism  had  turned  away  from  nature 
and  the  phenomenal  world,  and,  blind  towards  that  which  lay  be- 
fore the  very  eyes,  had  spent  itself  in  a  dreamy  intellectuality  ; 
but  now  nature  rose  again  in  honor ;  her  glory  and  exaltation,  her 
infinite  diversity  and  fulness  of  life  became  again  the  immediate 
objects  of  observation;  to  investigate  nature  became  an  essential 
object  of  philosophy,  and  scientific  empiricism  was  thus  regarded 
as  a  universal  and  essential  concern  of  the  thinking  man.  From 
this  time  the  natural  sciences  date  their  historical  importance,  for 
only  from  this  time  have  they  had  an  uninterrupted  history.  The 
results  of  this  new  intellectual  movement  can  be  readily  estimated. 
Such  a  scientific  investigation  of  nature  not  only  destroyed  a 
series  of  traditional  errors  and  prejudices,  but,  what  was  of 
greater  importance,  it  directed  the  intellectual  interest  towards 
that  which  is  real  and  actual,  it  nourished  and  protected  the  self- 
thinking  and  feeling  of  self-dependence,  the  spirit  of  inquiry  and 


166 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


proof.  The  stand-point  of  observation  and  experiment  presupposes 
an  independent  self-consciousness  of  the  individual,  a  breaking 
loose  from  authority — in  a  word,  scepticism,  with  which,  in  fact, 
the  founders  of  modern  philosophy,  Bacon  and  Descartes^  began ; 
the  former  by  conditioning  the  knowledge  of  nature  upon  the  re- 
moval of  all  prejudice  and  every  preconceived  opinion,  and  the 
latter  by  demanding  that  philosophy  should  be  begun  with  uni- 
versal doubt.  No  wonder  that  a  bitter  struggle  should  soon  break 
out  between  the  natural  sciences  and  ecclesiastical  orthodoxy, 
which  could  only  result  in  breaking  the  power  of  the  latter. 

6.  Bacon  of  Yerulam. — Francis  of  Yerulam  was  "born  in 
1561,  and  was  Lord  High  Chancellor  of  England  and  keeper  of 
the  king's  seal  under  James  I.  From  these  offices  he  was  subse- 
quently expelled,  and  died  in  1626,  with  a  character  which  has 
not  been  without  reproach.  He  took  as  his  principle  the  induc- 
tive method,  which  he  directed  expressly  against  Scholasticism 
and  the  ruling  scientific  method.  On  this  account  he  is  frequent- 
ly placed  at  the  head  of  modern  philosophy. 

The  sciences,  says  Bacon,  have  hitherto  been  in  a  most  sad 
condition.  Philosophy,  wasted  in  empty  and  fruitless  logoma- 
chies, has  failed  during  so  many  centuries  to  bring  out  a  single 
work  or  experiment  of  actual  benefit  to  human  life.  Logic  hith- 
erto has  served  more  to  the  establishment  of  error  than  to  the 
investigation  of  truth.  Whence  all  this  ?  Why  this  penury  of  the 
sciences  ?  Simply  because  they  have  broken  away  from  their 
root  in  nature  and  experience.  The  blame  of  this  is  chargeable 
to  many  sources ;  first,  the  old  and  rooted  prejudice  that^  the  human 
mind  loses  somewhat  of  its  dignity  when  it  busies  itself  much 
and  continuously  with  experiments  and  material  things ;  next,  su- 
perstition and  a  blind  religious  zeal,  which  has  been  the  most  irre- 
concilable opposer  to  natural  philosophy;  again,  the  exclusive 
attention  paid  to  morals  and  politics  by  the  Romans,  and  since  the 
Christain  era  to  theology  by  every  acute  mind ;  still  farther,  the 
great  authority  which  certain  philosophers  have  professed,  and 
the  great  reverence  given,  to  antiquity ;  and  in  fine,  a  want  of  cour- 
age and  a  despair  of  overcoming  the  many  and  great  difficulties 


TRANSITION  TO  THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 


1G7 


whicli  lie  in  the  way  of  the  investigation  of  nature.  All  these 
causes  have  contributed  to  keep  down  the  sciences.  Hence  they 
must  now  be  renewed,  and  regenerated,  and  reformed  in  their 
most  fundamental  principles ;  there  must  now  be  found  a  new 
basis  of  knowledge  and  new  principles  of  science.  This  radical 
reformation  of  the  sciences  depends  upon  two  conditions,  object- 
ively upon  the  referring  of  science  to  experience  and  the  philos- 
ophy of  nature,  and  subjectively  upon  the  purifying  of  the  sense 
and  the  intellect  from  all  abstract  theories  and  traditional  preju- 
dices. Both  conditions  furnish  the  correct  method  of  natural 
science,  which  is  nothing  other  than  the  method  of  induction. 
Upon  a  true  induction  depends  all  the  soundness  of  the  sciences. 

In  these  propositions  the  Baconian  philosophy  is  contained. 
The  historical  significance  of  its  founder  is,  therefore,  in  general 
this, — that  he  directed  the  attention  and  reflection  of  his  cotem- 
poraries  again  upon  the  given  actuality,  upon  nature ;  that  he  af- 
firmed the  necessity  of  experience,  which  had  been  formerly  only 
a  matter  of  accident,  and  made  it  as  in  and  for  itself  an  object  of 
thought.  His  merit  consists  in  having  brought  up  the  principle 
of  scientific  empiricism,  and  only  in  this.  Strictly  speaking,  we 
can  allow  no  content  to  the  Baconian  philosophy,  although  (in  his 
treatise  de  augmentis  scientiarum)  he  has  attempted  a  systematic 
encyclopedia  of  the  sciences  according  to  a  new  principle  of  classi- 
fication, through  which  he  has  scattered  an  abundance  of  fine  and 
fruitful  observations,  which  are  still  used  as  apothegms. 

7.  The  Italian  Philosophers  of  the  Transition  Epoch. — 
Besides  Bacon,  other  phenomena  must  be  noticed  which  have  pre- 
pared and  introduced  the  new  age  of  philosophy.  First  among 
these  is  a  list  of  Italian  philosophers,  from  the  second  half  of  the 
sixteenth  and  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century.  These 
philosophers  are  connected  in  a  twofold  manner  with  the  movements 
already  sketched  of  this  transition  period,  first  by  an  enthusiasm 
for  nature  which  among  them  all  partook  in  a  greater  or  less  degree 
of  pantheism  ( Yanini  e.  g.  gave  to  one  of  his  writings  the  title  "  con- 
cerning the  wonderful  secrets  of  nature,  the  queen  and  goddess 
of  mortals"),  and  second,  by  their  connection  with  the  systems  of 


168 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


ancient  philosopliy.  The  best  known  of  these  philosophers  are 
the  following:  Cardanus  (1501-1575),  Campanella  (1568-1639), 
Giordano  Bruno  ( — 1600),  Vanini  (1586-1619.)  They  were  all 
men  of  a  passionate,  enthusiastic  and  impetuous  nature,  unsteady 
and  wild  in  character,  restless  and  adventurous  in  life,  men  who 
were  inspired  by  an  eager  impulse  towards  knowledge,  but  who 
were  carried  away  by  great  fantasy,  wildness  of  imagination,  and 
a  seeking  after  secret  astrological  and  geomantic  knowledge.  For 
these  reasons  they  also  passed  away,  leaving  no  fruitful  result 
behind.  They  were  all  persecuted  by  the  hierarchy,  and  two  of 
them  (Bruno  and  Yanini)  ended  their  lives  at  the  stake.  In  their 
whole  historical  appearance  they  are  like  the  eruption  of  a  volcano, 
and  are  to  be  regarded  more  as  forerunners  and  announcers  than  as 
beginners  and  founders  of  the  new  age  of  philosophy.  The  most 
important  among  them  is  Giordano  Bruno.  He  reviewed  the  old 
idea  of  the  Stoics,  that  the  world  is  a  living  being,  and  that  a 
world-soul  penetrates  it  all.  The  content  of  his  general  thought 
is  the  profoundest  enthusiasm  for  nature,  and  the  plastic  reason 
which  is  present  in  it.  The  reason  is,  according  to  him,  the  inner 
artist  who  shapes  the  matter  and  manifests  himself  in  the  forms 
of  the  universe.  From  the  heart  of  the  root  or  the  germ  he  sends 
out  the  lobes,  and  from  these  again  he  evolves  the  shoots,  and 
from  the  shoots  the  branches,  until  bud,  and  leaf,  and  blossom  are 
brought  forth.  Every  thing  is  arranged,  adjusted,  and  perfected 
within.  Thus  the  universal  reason  calls  back  from  within  the 
sap  out  of  the  fruits  and  flowers  to  the  branches  again,  &c.  The 
universe  thus  is  an  infinite  living  thing,  in  which  every  thing  lives 
and  moves  after  the  most  manifold  way. 

The  relation  of  the  reason  to  matter,  Bruno  determines  wholly 
in  the  Aristotelian  manner ;  both  stand  related  to  each  other  as 
form  and  matter,  as  actuality  and  potentiality,  neither  is  without 
the  other ;  the  form  is  the  inner  impelling  might  of  matter,  and 
matter,  as  the  unlimited  possibility,  as  the  capability  for  an  infi 
nite  diversity  of  form,  is  the  mother  of  all  forms.  The  other  side 
of  Bruno's  philosophizing,  his  elaboration  of  the  topics  of  Lullus 


TRANSITION  TO  THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 


169 


which  occupies  the  greater  part  of  his  writings,  has  little  philosophic 
interest,  and  we  therefore  pass  it  by. 

8.  Jacob  Boehme. — As  Bacon  among  the  English  and  Bruno 
among  the  Italians,  so  Jacob  Boehme  is  the  index  among  the 
Germans  of  this  transition  period.  Each  one  of  these  three  indi- 
cates it  in  a  way  peculiar  to  his  own  nationality ;  Bacon  as  the 
herald  of  empiricism,  Bruno  as  the  representative  of  a  poetic  pan- 
theism, and  Boehme  as  the  father  of  the  theosophic  mysticism. 
If  we  regarded  alone  the  profoundness  of  his  principle,  Boehme 
should  hold  a  much  later  place  in  the  history  of  philosophy,  but 
if  we  looked  chiefly  at  the  imperfect  form  of  his  philosophizing, 
his  rank  would  be  assigned  to  the  mystics  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
while  chronologically  we  must  associate  him  with  the  German 
Reformation  and  the  protestant  elements  that  were  nourished  at 
that  time.  His  true  position  is  among  the  forerunners  and 
prophets  of  the  new  age. 

Jacob  Boehme  was  born  in  1575,  in  old  Seidenburg,  a  village 
of  upper  Lusace,  not  far  from  Goerlitz.  His  parents  were  poor 
peasants.  In  his  boyhood  he  took  care  of  the  cattle,  and  in  his 
youth,  after  he  had  acquired  the  rudiments  of  reading  and  writing 
in  a  village  school,  he  was  sent  to  Goerlitz  to  learn  the  shoe- 
maker's art.  He  finished  his  apprenticeship  and  settled  down  at 
Goerlitz  in  1594  as  master  of  his  trade.  Even  in  his  youth  he 
had  received  illuminations  or  mysterious  revealings,  which  were 
subsequently  repeated  when  his  soul,  striving  for  the  truth,  had 
become  profoundly  agitated  by  the  religious  conflicts  of  the  age. 
Besides  the  Bible,  the  only  books  which  Boehme  read  were  some 
mystical  writings  of  a  theosophic  and  alchymistic  content,  e.  g. 
those  of  Paracelsus.  His  entire  want  of  culture  is  seen  as  soon 
as  he  undertakes  to  write  down  his  thoughts,  or,  as  he  calls  them, 
his  illuminations.  Hence  the  imperious  struggle  of  the  thought 
with  the  expression,  which,  however,  not  unfrequently  rises  to  a 
dialectical  acuteness  and  a  poetic  beauty.  His  first  treatise,  Au- 
rora, composed  in  the  year  1612,  brought  Boehme  into  trouble 
with  the  chief  pastor  in  Goerlitz,  Gregorious  Richter,  who  pub- 
licly condemned  the  book  from  the  pulpit,  and  even  ridiculed  the 
8 


170 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


person  of  its  author.  The  writing  of  books  was  prohibited  him 
by  a  magistrate,  a  prohibition  which  Boehme  observed  for  many 
years,  till  at  length  the  command  of  the  spirit  was  too  mighty 
within  him,  and  he  took  up  again  his  literary  labors.  Boehme 
was  a  plain,  quiet,  modest  and  gentle  man.    He  died  in  1624. 

To  give  an  exhibition  of  his  theosophy  in  a  few  words  is  very 
difficult,  since  Boehme,  instead  of  clothing  his  thoughts  in  a  logical 
form,  dressed  them  only  in  pictures  of  the  sense  and  obscure 
analogies,  and  often  availed  himself  of  the  most  arbitrary  and 
singular  modes  of  expression.  A  twilight  reigns  in  his  writings 
as  in  a  Grothic  cathedral  where  the  light  falls  through  variegated 
windows.  Hence  the  magic  effect  which  he  has  made  upon  many 
hearts.  The  chief  thought  of  his  philosophizing  is  this,  viz.,  that 
the  distinguishing  of  the  self  from  the  not-self  is  the  essential  de- 
termination of  spirit,  and  hence  of  God  so  far  as  God  is  to  be  ap 
prehended  as  spirit.  God,  according  to  Boehme,  is  living  spirit 
only  at  the  time  and  in  the  degree  in  which  he  conceives  the  dis 
tinction  within  himself  from  himself,  and  is  in  this  distinction 
object  and  consciousness.  The  distinction  of  God  in  himself  is 
the  only  source  of  his  and  of  all  actuosity  and  spontaneity,  the 
spring  and  fountain  of  that  self-active  life  which  produces  con- 
sciousness out  of  itself.  Boehme  is  inexhaustible  in  images  by 
which  this  negativity  in  God,  his  self-distinguishing  and  self-re- 
nunciation to  the  world,  may  be  made  conceivable.  The  great 
expansion  without  end,  he  says,  needs  limitation  and  a  compas 
in  which  it  may  manifest  itself,  for  in  expansion  without  limit 
there  could  be  no  manifestation,  there  must  be  a  contraction  and 
an  enclosing,  in  order  that  a  manifestation  may  arise.  See,  he 
says  in  another  place,  if  the  will  were  only  of  one  kind,  then  would 
the  soul  have  only  one  quality,  and  were  an  immovable  thing, 
which  would  always  lie  still  and  never  do  any  thing  farther  tha 
one  thing ;  in  this  there  could  be  no  joy,  as  also  no  art  nor  science 
of  other  things,  and  no  wisdom ;  every  thing  would  be  a  nothing 
and  there  would  be  neither  heart  nor  will  for  any  thing,  for  there 
would  be  only  the  single.  Hence  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  whole 
God  is  in  one  will  and  essence,  there  is  a  distinction.  Nothing 


TRANSITION  TO  THE  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.  171 

can  ever  become  manifest  to  itself  without  resistance,  for  if  it  hag 
nothing  resisting,  it  expends  itself  and  never  comes  to  itself  again ; 
but  if  it  does  not  come  to  itself  again  except  in  that  from  which  it 
has  originally  sprung,  it  thus  knows  nothing  of  its  original  con- 
dition. The  above  thought  Boehme  expresses  when  he  says  in  his 
Questionibus  TTieosophicis  ;  the  reader  should  know  that  in  yea 
and  nay  all  things  consist,  whether  divine,  devilish,  earthly,  or 
whatever  may  be  named.  The  one  as  the  yea,  is  simple  energy 
and  love,  and  is  the  truth  of  Grod  and  God  himself.  But  this 
were  inconceivable,  and  there  were  neither  delight,  nor  import- 
ance, nor  sensibility,  without  the  nay.  The  nay  is  thrown  in  the 
way  of  the  yea,  or  of  truth,  in  order  that  the  truth  may  be  mani- 
fest and  something,  in  which  there  may  be  a  contrarium,  where 
eternal  love  may  work  and  become  sensitive  and  willing.  There 
is  nothing  in  the  one  which  is  an  occasion  for  willing  until  the  one 
becomes  duplicated,  and  so  there  can  be  no  sensation  in  unity,  but 
only  in  duality.  In  brief,  according  to  Boehme,  neither  know- 
ledge nor  consciousness  is  possible,  without  distinction,  without 
opposition,  without  duplication;  a  thing  becomes  clear  and  an 
object  of  consciousness  only  through  something  else,  through  its 
own  opposition  identical  with  its  own  being.  It  was  very  natural 
to  connect  this  thought  of  a  unity  distinguishing  itself  in  itself, 
with  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  as  Boehme  has,  in  fact, 
repeatedly  done  when  treating  of  the  Divine  life  and  its  process 
of  duplication.  Schelling  afterwards  took  up  these  ideas  of 
Boehme  and  philosophically  elaborated  them. 

If  we  should  assign  to  the  theosophy  of  Boehme  a  position  in 
the  development  of  later  philosophy  corresponding  to  the  inner 
content  of  its  principle,  it  would  most  properly  be  placed  as  a 
complement  to  the  system  of  Spinoza.  If  Spinoza  taught  the 
flowing  back  of  all  the  finite  into  the  eternal  one,  Boehme,  on  the 
other  hand,  shows  the  procession  of  the  finite  from  the  eternal  one, 
and  the  inner  necessity  of  this  procession,  since  the  being  of  this 
one  would  be  rather  a  not-being  without  such  a  self-duplication. 
Compared  with  Descartes,  Boehme  has  at  least  more  profoundly 
apprehended  the  conception  of  self  consciousness  and  the  relation 


172 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


of  the  finite  to  God.  But  his  historical  position  in  other  respects 
is  far  too  isolated  and  exceptional,  and  his  mode  of  statement  far 
too  impure,  to  warrant  us  in  incorporating  him  anywhere  in  a 
series  of  systems  developed  continuously  and  in  a  genetic  con- 
nection. 


SECTION  XXIY. 

DESCARTES. 

The  beginner  and  founder  of  modern  philosophy  is  Descartes. 
While  he,  like  the  men  of  the  transition  epoch  just  noticed,  broke 
loose  entirely  from  the  previous  philosophizing,  and  began  his 
work  wholly  de  novo^  yet  he  did  not  content  himself,  like  Bacon, 
with  merely  bringing  out  a  new  method,  or  like  Boehme  and  his 
cotemporaries  among  the  Italians,  with  affirming  philosophical 
views  without  a  methodical  ground.  He  went  further  than  any 
of  these,  and  making  his  stand-point  one  of  universal  doubt,  he 
affirms  a  new,  positive,  and  pregnant  philosophical  principle,  from 
which  he  attempted  logically  to  deduce  the  chief  points  of  hia 
system.  The  character  and  novelty  of  his  principle  makes  him 
the  beginner,  and  its  inner  fruitfulness  the  founder,  of  modern 
philosophy. 

Bene  Descartes  {Renatus  Cartesius)  was  born  in  1596,  at  La 
Haye  in  Torraine.  Possessing  an  independent  property,  he  volun- 
teered as  a  soldier  in  his  twenty-first  year,  and  served  in  the  wars 
with  the  Dutch,  the  Bavarians,  and  the  Imperialists.  After  this 
he  travelled  a  good  deal,  and  then  abode  a  considerable  time  in 
Paris.  In  1629  he  left  his  native  land,  and  betook  himself  to 
Holland,  that  he  might  there,  undisturbed  and  unknown,  devote 
himself  to  philosophy,  and  elaborate  his  scientific  ideas.  He  spent 
twenty  years  in  Holland,  enduring  much  vexatious  treatment  from 
fanatical  theologians,  till  in  1649  he  accepted  an  invitation  froml 
Queen  Christina  of  Sweden,  to  visit  Stockholm,  where  he  died  inl 
the  following  year.  J 


DESCARTES. 


173 


The  chief  content  of  the  Cartesian  system  may  be  seen  con 
densed  in  the  following  epitome. 

1.  If  science  would  have  any  thing  fixed  and  abiding,  it  must 
begin  with  the  primal  ground  of  things;  every  presupposition 
which  we  may  have  cherished  from  infancy  must  be  abandoned ; 
in  a  word,  we  must  doubt  at  every  point  to  which  the  least  uncer- 
tainty is  attached.  We  must  therefore  doubt  not  only  the  exist- 
ence of  the  objects  of  sense,  since  the  senses  so  frequently  deceive, 
but  also  the  truths  of  mathematics  and  geometry — for,  however 
evident  the  proposition  may  appear  that  two  and  three  make  five, 
or  that  the  square  has  four  sides,  yet  we  cannot  know  but  what 
God  may  have  designedly  formed  us  for  erroneous  judgments. 
It  is  therefore  advisable  to  doubt  every  thing,  in  fact  to  deny 
every  thing,  to  posit  every  thing  as  false. 

2.  But  though  we  posit  every  thing  as  false  to  which  the  slight- 
est doubt  maybe  attached,  yet  we  cannot  deny  one  thing,  viz.,  the 
truth  that  we,  who  so  think,  do  exist.  But  rather  from  the  very 
fact  that  I  posit  every  thing  as  false,  that  I  doubt  every  thing, 
is  it  manifest  that  I,  the  doubter,  exist.  Hence  the  proposition: 
I  think,  therefore  I  am  [cogito  ergo  sum),  is  the  first  and  most 
certain  position  which  offers  itself  to  every  one  attempting  to 
philosophize.  Upon  this  the  most  certain  of  all  propositions,  the 
certainty  of  all  other  knowledge  depends.  The  objection  of  Gas- 
sendi  that  the  truth  of  existence  follows  from  any  other  activity 
of  man  as  well  as  from  thinking,  that  I  might  just  as  well  say :  I 
go  to  walk,  therefore  I  exist, — has  no  weight;  for,  of  all  my 
actions,  I  can  be  absolutely  certain  only  of  my  thinking. 

3.  From  the  proposition  I  think,  therefore,  I  am,  the  whole 
nature  of  the  mind  may  be  determined.  When  we  examine  who 
we  are  who  hold  every  thing  to  be  false  that  is  distinct  from  our- 
selves, we  see  clearly  that  neither  extension  nor  figure,  nor  any 
thing  which  can  be  predicated  of  body,  but  only  thought,  belongs 
to  our  nature.  I  am  therefore  only  a  thinking  being,  i.  e.  mind, 
soul,  intelligence,  reason.  Thought  is  my  substance.  Mind  can 
therefore  be  apprehended  clearly  and  completely  for  itself  alone, 
without  any  of  those  attributes  which  belong  to  body.    Its  con- 


174 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


ception  contains  nothing  of  that  which  belongs  to  the  conception 
of  body.  It  is  therefore  impossible  to  apprehend  it  through  any- 
sensuous  representation,  or  to  make  an  image  of  it :  it  apprehends 
itself  only  through  the  pure  intelligence. 

4.  From  the  proposition  cogiio  ergo  sum,  follows  still  farther 
the  universal  rule  of  all  certainty.    I  am  certain  that  I  am 
thinking  being,  what  now  is  involved  in  the  fact  that  I  am  certai 
of  any  thing  ?    Whence  comes  this  certainty  ?    From  no  othe 
source  than  the  knowledge  that  this  first  proposition  contains  a 
clear  conception  of  that  which  I  affirm.  I  know  of  a  certainty  that 
I  am,  and  I  know  any  thing  else  only  when  I  know  it  as  certainly 
as  I  know  that  I  am.    Hence  I  may  regard  it  as  a  universal  rule, 
that  every  thing  is  true  which  I  know  clearly  and  determinately. 

5.  This  rule,  however,  is  only  a  principle  of  certainty,  not  of 
knowledge  and  of  truth.    We  apply  it  therefore  to  our  thought 
or  ideas,  in  order  to  discover  what  is  objectively  true.    But  our 
ideas  are  partly  innate,  partly  acquired,  and  partly  self-originated 
Among  those  of  the  first  class  we  find  the  idea  of  a  God.  The 
question  arises,  whence  have  we  this  idea  ?    Manifestly  not  from 
ourselves ;  this  idea  could  only  be  implanted  within  us  by  a  being 
who  has  the  fulness  of  all  perfection  in  himself,  i.  e.  only  by  an 
actually  existing  God.    If  I  ask  now  the  question,  whence  have  I 
the  faculty  to  conceive  of  a  nature  more  perfect  than  my  own  ?  the 
answer  must  ever  come,  that  I  have  it  only  from  him  whose  nature 
is  actually  more  perfect.    All  the  attributes  of  God,  the  more 
contemplate  them,  show  that  their  idea  could  not  have  originate 
with  myself  alone.    For  though  there  might  be  in  me  the  idc 
of  substance  because  I  am  a  substance,  yet  I  could  not  of  myself 
have  the  idea  of  an  infinite  substance,  since  I  am  finite ;  such  a 
idea  could  only  be  given  me  through  a  substance  actually  infinite. 
Moreover,  we  must  not  think  that  the  conception  of  the  infinite  is 
to  be  gained  through  abstraction  and  negation,  as  we  might  gain 
darkness  through  the  negation  of  light ;  but  I  perceive,  rather, 
that  the  infinite  contains  more  reality  than  the  finite,  and  that, 
therefore,  the  conception  of  the  infinite  must  be  correspondingl 
antecedent  in  me  to  that  of  the  finite.    Since  then  I  have  a  cle 


DESCARTES. 


17£ 


and  determined  idea  of  the  infinite  substance,  and  since  this  has  a 
greater  objective  reality  than  every  other,  so  is  there  no  othel 
which  I  have  so  little  reason  to  doubt.  But  now  since  I  am  cer- 
tain that  the  idea  of  God  has  come  to  me  from  God  himself,  it 
only  remains  for  me  to  examine  the  way  in  which  I  have  received 
it  from  God.  I  have  never  derived  it  directly  nor  indirectly  from 
the  sense,  for  ideas  through  the  sense  arise  only  by  affecting  the 
external  organs  of  sense ;  neither  have  I  devised  it,  for  I  can 
neither  add  to  it  nor  diminish  it  in  any  respect, — it  must,  there- 
fore, be  innate  as  the  idea  of  myself  is  innate.  Hence  the  first 
proof  we  can  assign  for  the  being  of  a  God  is  the  fact  that  we 
find  the  idea  of  a  God  within  us,  and  that  we  must  have  a  cause 
for  its  being.  '  Again,  the  being  of  a  God  may  be  concluded  from 
my  own  imperfection,  and  especially  from  the  knowledge  of  my 
imperfection.  For  since  I  know  that  there  is  a  perfection  which 
is  wanting  in  me,  it  follows  that  there  must  exist  a  being  who  is 
more  perfect  than  I,  on  whom  I  depend  and  from  whom  I  receive 
all  I  possess. — But  the  best  and  most  evident  proof  for  the  being 
of  a  God  is,  in  fine,  that  which  is  gained  from  the  conception  of 
a  God.  The  mind  among  all  its  different  ideas  singles  out  the 
chiefest  of  all,  that  of  the  most  perfect  being,  and  perceives  that 
this  has  not  only  the  possibility  of  existence,  i.  e.  accidental  ex- 
istence like  all  other  ideas,  but  that  it  possesses  necessary  exist- 
ence in  itself.  And  as  the  mind  knows  that  in  every  triangle  its 
three  angles  are  equal  to  two  right  angles,  because  this  is  involved 
in  the  very  idea  of  a  triangle,  so  does  the  mind  necessarily  infer 
that  necessary  existence  belongs  to  the  conception  of  the  most 
perfect  being,  and  that,  therefore,  the  most  perfect  being  actually 
exists.  No  other  idea  which  the  mind  finds  within  itself  contains 
necessary  existence,  but  from  the  idea  of  the  highest  being  exist- 
ence cannot  be  separated  without  contradiction.  It  is  only  our 
prejudices  which  keep  us  from  seeing  this.  Since  we  are  accus- 
tomed in  every  thing  to  separate  its  conception  from  its  existence, 
and  since  we  often  make  ideas  arbitrarily,  it  readily  happens,  that 
when  we  contemplate  the  highest  being  we  are  in  doubt  whether 
its  idea  may  not  be  one  also  arbitrarily  devised,  or  at  least  one  in 


176 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


whose  conception  existence  does  not  lie. — This  proof  is  essentially 
different  from  that  of  Thomas  (Anselm  of  Canterbury).  His 
argument  was  as  follows :  "  If  we  understand  what  is  indicated 
by  the  word  God,  it  is  all  that  can  be  conceived  of  greatness ;  but 
now  there  is  actually  and  in  thought  more  belonging  to  him  than 
the  word  represents,  and  therefore  God  exists  not  only  in  word 
(or  representation),  but  in  fact."  Here  the  deftct  in  the  syllogism 
is  manifest,  for  from  the  premise  it  could  only  be  concluded  that 
God  must  therefore  be  represenied  as  existing  in  fact,  while  his 
actual  existence  would  not  follow.  My  proof  on  the  other  hand 
is  this, — we  may  predicate  of  a  thing  what  we  clearly  see  belongs 
to  its  true  and  changeless  nature,  or  to  its  essence,  or  to  its  form. 
But  now  after  we  had  examined  what  God  is,  we  found  existence 
to  belong  to  his  true  and  changeless  nature,  and  therefore  may  we 
properly  predicate  existence  of  God.  Necessary  existence  is  con- 
tained in  the  idea  of  the  most  perfect  being,  not  by  a  fiction  of 
our  understanding  but  because  existence  belongs  to  his  eternal  and 
changeless  nature. 

6.  The  result  just  found — the  existence  of  God — is  of  the 
highest  consequence.  Before  attaining  this  we  were  obliged  to 
doubt  every  thing,  and  give  up  even  every  certainty,  for  we  did 
not  know  but  that  it  belonged  to  the  nature  of  the  human  mind 
to  err,  but  that  God  had  created  us  for  error.  But  so  soon  as  we 
look  at  the  necessary  attributes  of  God  in  the  innate  idea  of  him, 
so  soon  as  we  know  that  he  is  true,  it  would  be  a  contradiction  to 
suppose  that  he  would  deceive  us,  or  that  he  could  have  made  us 
to  err ;  for  though  an  ability  to  deceive  might  prove  his  skill,  a 
willingness  to  deceive  would  only  demonstrate  his  frailty.  Our 
reason,  therefore,  can  never  apprehend  an  object  which  would  not 
be  true  so  far  as  the  reason  'apprehended  it,  i.  e.  so  far  as  it  is 
clearly  known.  For  God  might  justly  be  styled  a  deceiver  if  he 
had  given  us  a  reason  so  perverted  as  to  hold  the  false  for  the  true. 
And  thus  every  absolute  doubt  with  which  we  began  is  dispelled. 
Prom  the  being  of  God  we  derive  every  certainty.  For  every 
sure  knowledge  it  is  only  necessary  that  we  have  clearly  known  a 


DESCARTES. 


177 


thiDg,  and  are  also  certain  of  the  existence  of  a  God,  wlio  would 
not  deceive. 

7.  From  the  true  idea  of  God  follow  the  principles  of  a  phi« 
losophy  of  nature  or  the  doctrine  of  the  two  substances.  Substance 
is  that  which  so  exists  that  it  needs  nothing  else  for  its  existence. 
In  this  (highest)  sense  God  is  the  only  substance.  God,  as  the 
infinite  substance,  has  his  ground  in  himself,  is  the  cause  of  him- 
self The  two  created  substances,  on  the  other  hand,  the  thinking 
and  the  corporeal  substance,  mind  and  matter,  are  substances 
only  in  a  broader  sense  of  the  word ;  they  may  be  apprehended 
under  the  common  conception  that  they  are  things  which  need 
only  the  co-operation  of  God  for  their  existence.  Each  of  these 
two  substances  has  an  attribute  which  constitutes  its  nature  and 
its  essence,  and  to  which  all  its  other  determinations  may  be  re- 
ferred. The  attribute  and  essence  of  matter  is  extension,  that  of 
mind,  thought.  For  every  thing  else  which  can  be  predicated  of 
body  presupposes  extension,  and  is  only  a  mode  of  extension,  as 
every  thing  we  can  find  in  mind  is  only  a  modification  of  thought. 
A  substance  to  which  thought  immediately  belongs  is  called 
mind,  and  a  substance,  whose  immediate  substratum  is  extension, 
is  called  body.  Since  thought  and  extension  are  distinct  from 
each  other,  and  since  mind  cannot  only  be  known  without  the 
attributes  of  the  body,  but  is  in  itself  the  negation  of  those  attri- 
butes, we  may  say  that  the  essence  of  these  substances  is  in  their 
reciprocal  negation.  Mind  and  body  are  wholly  distinct,  and 
have  nothing  in  common. 

8.  We  pass  by  the  physics  of  Descartes,  which  has  only  a  sub- 
ordinate philosophical  interest,  and  notice  next  his  views  of  anthro- 
pology. From  this  dualistic  relation  between  mind  and  matter 
there  follows  a  dualistic  relation  between  soul  and  body.  If 
matter  is  essentially  extension,  and  mind  essentially  thought,  and 
if  the  two  have  nothing  in  common,  then  the  union  of  soul  and 
body  can  be  conceived  only  as  a  mechanical  one.  The  body  is  ta 
be  regarded  as  an  artistic  automaton,  which  God  has  made,  as  h 
statue  or  machine  formed  by  God  from  the  earth.  "Within  thi? 
body  the  soul  dwells,  closely  but  not  internally  connected  with  it 

8* 


178 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


The  union  of  the  two  is  only  a  powerful  bringing  of  the  two  to- 
gether, since  each  is  not  only  an  independent  factor,  but  is  essen- 
tially distinct  from  and  even  opposed  to  the  other.  The  body  by 
itself  is  a  machine  fully  prepared,  in  which  nothing  is  changed  by 
the  entrance  of  the  thinking  soul,  except  that  through  it  certain 
motions  are  secured :  the  wheel-work  of  the  machine  remains  as 
it  was.  It  is  only  thought  which  distinguishes  this  machine  from 
every  other ;  hence,  therefore,  brutes  which  are  not  self-conscious 
nor  thinking,  must  be  ranked  with  all  other  machines.  From  this 
stand-point  arose  especially  the  question  concerning  the  seat  of 
the  soul.  If  body  and  soul  are  independent  substances,  each  essen- 
tially opposed  to  the  other,  they  cannot  interpenetrate  each  other, 
but  can  touch  only  at  one  point  when  they  are  powerfully  brought 
together.  This  point  where  the  soul  has  its  seat,  is,  according  to 
Descartes,  not  the  whole  brain  but  the  pineal  gland,  a  little  kernel 
in  the  middle  of  the  brain.  The  proof  for  this  claim,  that  the 
pineal  gland  is  the  only  place  where  the  soul  immediately  exhibits 
its  energy,  is  found  in  the  circumstance  that  all  other  parts  of  the 
brain  are  twofold,  which  should  not  be  in  an  organ  where  the  soul 
has  its  seat,  else  objects  would  appear  double.  There  is,  there- 
fore, no  other  place  in  the  body  where  impressions  can  be  so  well 
united  as  in  this  gland.  The  pineal  gland  is,  therefore,  the  chief 
seat  of  the  soul,  and  the  place  where  all  our  thoughts  are  formed. 

We  have  thus  developed  the  fundamental  thoughts  of  the  Car- 
tesian system,  and  will  now  recapitulate  in  a  few  words  the  fea- 
tures characteristic  of  its  stand-point  and  historic  position. 
Descartes  was  the  founder  of  a  new  epoch  in  philosophy,  firsts 
from  his  postulate  of  universal  freedom  from  all  preconceptions. 
His  protesting  against  every  thing  which  is  not  posited  by  the 
thought,  against  taking  any  thing  for  granted  in  respect  of  the 
truth,  has  remained  from  that  time  onward  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  the  new  age.  Secondly.  Descartes  has  brought  out  the 
principle  of  self-consciousness  (the  mind  or  the  thinking  substance 
is  regarded  by  him  as  an  individual  self,  a  particular  Ego) — a  new 
principle,  unknown  in  this  view  to  the  ancients.  Thirdly.  Des- 
cartes has  shown  the  opposition  between  being  and  thought,  exist* 


DESCARTES. 


179 


ence  and  consciousness,  and  the  mediation  of  this  opposition, 
which  has  been  the  problem  of  the  -whole  modern  philosophy,  he 
first  afl&rmed  as  the  true  philosophical  problem.  But  with  these 
ideas,  which  make  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  philosophy,  there  are 
at  the  same  time  connected  the  defects  of  the  Cartesian  philoso- 
phizing. First.  Descartes  gained  the  content  of  his  system, 
namely  his  three  substances,  empirically.  True,  the  system  which 
begins  with  a  protestation  against  all  existence  would  seem  to  take 
nothing  for  granted,  but  to  derive  every  thing  from  the  thinking. 
But  in  fact  this  protesting  is  not  thoroughly  carried  out.  That 
which  seems  to  be  cast  aside  is  afterwards,  when  the  principle  of 
certainty  is  gained,  taken  up  again  unchanged.  And  so  it  hap- 
pens that  Descartes  finds  at  hand  not  only  the  idea  of  God,  but 
his  two  substances  as  something  immediately  given.  True,  in 
order  to  reach  them,  he  abstracts  every  thing  which  lies  immedi- 
ately before  him,  but  in  the  end  the  two  substances  are  seen  as 
that  which  remains  when  all  else  is  abstracted.  They  are  received 
empirically.  The  second  defect  is,  that  Descartes  separates  so 
wholly  from  each  other  the  two  sides  of  the  opposition  between 
thought  and  being.  He  posits  both  as  "substances,"  i.  e.  as 
powers,  which  reciprocally  exclude  and  negate  each  other.  The 
essence  of  matter  according  to  him  consists  only  in  extension,  i.  e. 
in  the  pure  being  extra  se  (Aussersichsein),  and  that  of  mind 
only  in  thought,  i.  e.  in  the  pure  being  in  se  {InsicJisein.)  The 
two  stand  over  against  each  other  as  centrifugal  and  centripetal. 
But  with  this  apprehension  of  mind  and  matter,  an  inner  media- 
tion of  the  two  is  an  impossibility  there  must  be  a  powerful  act 
of  creation,  there  must  be  the  divine  assistance  in  order  that  the 
two  sides  may  ever  come  together,  and  be  united  as  they  are  in 
man.  Nevertheless  Descartes  demands  and  attempts  such  a 
mediation  of  the  two  sides.  But  the  impossibility  of  truly  over- 
coming the  dualism  of  his  stand-point  is  the  third,  and  the  chief 
defect  of  his  system.  In  the  proposition  "  I  think,  therefore  I 
am,"  or  "  I  am  thinking,"  the  two  sides,  being  and  thought,  are 
indeed  connected  together,  but  only  that  they  may  become  fixed 
independently  in  respect  of  each  other.    If  the  question  is  asked, 


180 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


how  does  the  Ego  stand  related  to  the  extended  ?  the  answer  can 
only  be  :  by  thinking,  i.  e.  negatively,  by  excluding  it.  The  idea 
of  God,  therefore,  is  all  that  remains  for  the  mediation  of  these 
two  sides.  The  two  substances  are  created  by  God,  and  through 
the  divine  will  may  be  bound  together;  through  the  idea  of  God, 
the  Ego  attains  the  certainty  that  the  extended  exists.  God  is 
therefore  in  a  certain  degree  a  Deus  ex  machina,  necessary  in 
order  to  mediate  the  conflict  of  the  Ego  with  the  extended.  It 
is  obvious  how  external  such  a  mediation  is. 

This  defect  of  the  Cartesian  system  operated  as  an  impelling 
motive  to  those  which  succeeded. 


SECTION  XXV. 

GEULINCX   AND  MALEBRANCHE. 

1.  Mind  and  matter,  consciousness  and  existence,  Descartes 
had  fixed  in  the  farthest  separation  from  each  other.  Both, 
with  him,  are  substances,  independent  powers,  reciprocally  exclud- 
ing oppositions.  Mind  [i.  e.  in  his  view  the  simple  self,  the  Ego) 
he  regarded  as  essentially  the  abstraction  from  the  sensuous,  the 
distinguishing  itself  from  matter  and  the  separating  of  matter 
from  itself;  matter  was  essentially  the  complete  opposition  to 
thought.  If  the  relation  of  these  two  powers  be  as  has  been 
given,  then  the  question  arises,  how  can  there  ever  be  a  filiation 
{Bapport)  between  them  ?  How,  on  the  one  hand,  can  the  afioc- 
tions  of  the  body  work  upon  the  soul,  and  on  the  other  hand,  how 
can  the  volition  of  the  soul  direct  the  body,  if  the  two  are  ab- 
solutely distinct  and  opposed  to  each  other  ?  At  this  point, 
Arnold  Geulincx  (a  disciple  of  Descartes,  born  at  Antwerp  1625, 
and  died  as  professor  of  philosophy  at  Leydeu  1669)  took  up  the 
Cartesian  system,  and  endeavored  to  give  it  a  greater  logical  perfec- 
tion.   According  to  Geulincx  neither  the  soul  works  immediately 


GUELINCX  AND  MALEBRANCHE. 


181 


Upon  the  body,  nor  the  body  immediately  upon  the  soul.  Certainly 
not  the  former  :  for  though  1  can  determine  and  move  my  body  in 
many  respects  arbitrarily,  yet  /  am  not  the  cause  of  this  move- 
ment ;  for  I  know  not  how  it  happens,  I  know  not  in  what  man- 
ner motion  is  communicated  from  my  brain  to  the  different  parts 
of  my  body,  and  it  is  impossible  that  I  should  do  that  in  respect 
of  which  I  cannot  see  how  it  is  done.  But  if  I  cannot  produce 
motion  in  my  body,  much  less  can  I  do  this  outside  of  my  body. 
I  am  therefore  simply  a  contemplator  of  the  world ;  the  only  act 
which  is  peculiarly  mine  is  contemplation.  But  even  this  contem- 
plation arises  in  a  singular  manner.  For  if  we  ask  how  we  ob- 
tain our  observations  of  the  external  world,  we  find  it  impossible 
that  the  external  world  should  directly  give  them  to  us.  For 
however  much  we  may  say  that,  e.  g.  in  the  act  of  seeing,  the  ex- 
ternal objects  produce  an  image  in  my  eye  or  an  impression  in 
my  brain  as  in  wax,  yet  this  impression  or  picture  is  after  all  only 
something  corporeal  or  material,  and  cannot  therefore  come  into 
my  mind,  which  is  absolutely  distinct  from  every  thing  material. 
There  remains,  therefore,  only  that  we  seek  the  mediation  of  the 
two  sides  in  God.  It  is  God  alone  who  can  unite  the  outer  with 
the  inner,  and  the  inner  with  the  outer ;  who  can  make  the  outer 
phenomena  to  become  inner  representations  or  notions  of  the  mind ; 
who  can  thus  bring  the  world  within  the  mind's  observation,  and 
the  inner  determinations  of  the  will  outward  into  deed.  Hence 
every  working,  every  act  which  unites  the  outer  and  inner,  which 
brings  the  mind  and  the  world  into  connection,  is  neither  a  work- 
ing of  the  mind  nor  of  the  world,  but  only  an  immediate  working 
of  God.  The  movement  of  my  limbs  does  not  follow  from  my 
will,  but  only  because  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  these  movements 
should  follow  when  I  will.  My  will  is  an  occasion  by  which  God 
moves  my  body — an  affection  of  my  body  is  an  occasion  by  which 
God  brings  within  me  a  representation  of  the  external  world  :  the 
one  is  only  the  occasional  cause  of  the  other  (hence  the  name  oc- 
casionalism). My  will,  however,  does  not  move  God  to  move  my 
limbs,  but  he  who  has  imparted  motion  to  matter  and  given  it  its 
laws,  created  also  my  will,  and  has  so  connected  together  the  most 


182 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


diverse  things,  the  movement  of  matter  and  the  arbitrium  of  my 
will,  that  when  my  will  puts  forth  a  volition,  such  a  motion  fol- 
lows as  it  wills,  and  the  motion  follows  the  volition  without  any 
interaction  or  physical  influence  exerted  by  the  one  upon  the 
other.  But  just  as  it  is  with  two  clocks  which  go  exactly  alike, 
the  one  striking  precisely  as  the  other,  their  harmony  is  not  the 
result  of  any  reciprocal  interacting,  but  follows  because  both  have 
been  fashioned  and  directed  alike, — so  is  it  with  the  movements 
of  the  body  and  the  will,  they  harmonize  only  through  that  exalted 
artist  who  has  in  this  ineffable  way  connected  them  together. 
We  see  from  this  that  Geulincx  has  carried  to  its  limit  the 
dualistic  basis  of  Descartes.  While  Descartes  called  the  union 
of  mind  and  matter  a  conjunction  through  power,  Geulincx  named 
it  a  miracle.  There  is  consequently  in  this  view  no  immanent, 
but  only  a  transcendent  mediation  possible. 

2.  Closely  connected  with  this  view  of  Geulincx,  and  at  the 
same  time  a  real  consequence  and  a  wider  development  of  the 
Cartesian  philosophizing,  is  the  philosophic  stand-point  of  Nicolas 
Malehranclie.  He  was  born  at  Paris  in  1638,  chosen  a  member 
of  the  "  Congregation  de  Voratoire^''  in  his  twenty-second  year, 
won  over  to  philosophy  through  the  writings  of  Descartes,  and 
died,  after  numerous  feuds  with  theological  opposers,  in  1715. 

Malebranche  started  with  the  Cartesian  view  of  the  relation 
between  mind  and  matter.  Both  are  strictly  distinct  from  each 
'  other,  and  in  their  essence  opposed.  How  now  does  the  mind, 
[i.  e.  the  Ego)  gain  a  knowledge  of  the  external  world  and  have 
ideas  of  corporeal  things  ?  For  it  comes  to  know  things  only  by 
means  of  ideas, — not  through  itself,  not  immediately.  Now  the 
mind  can  neither  gain  these  ideas  from  itself,  nor  from  the  things 
themselves.  Not  from  itself,  for  it  is  absolutely  opposed  to  the 
bodily  world,  and  hence  has  no  capacity  to  idealize,  to  spirit- 
ualize material  things,  though'  they  must  become  spiritualized  be- 
fore they  can  be  introduced  to  the  mind ;  in  a  word,  the  mind, 
which  in  relation  to  the  material  world  is  only  an  opposition,  has 
no  power  to  destroy  this  opposition.  Just  as  little  has  the 
mind  derived  these  ideas  from  things :  for  matter  is  not  visible 


GEULINCX  AND  MALEBRANCHE. 


183 


through  itself,  but  rather  as  antithetic  to  miud  is  it  that  which  is 
absolutely  unintelligible,  and  which  cannot  be  idealized,  that  which 
is  absolutely  without  light  and  clearness. — It  only  remains,  there 
fore,  that  the  mind  beholds  things  in  a  third  that  stands  above  the 
opposition  of  the  two,  viz.,  God.  God,  as  the  absolute  substance, 
is  the  absolute  ideality,  the  infinite  power  to  spiritualize  all  things. 
Material  things  have  no  real  opposition  for  God,  to  him  they  are 
no  impenetrable  darkness,  but  an  ideal  existence ;  all  things  are 
in  him  spiritually  and  ideally ;  the  whole  world,  as  intellectual  or 
ideal,  is  God.  God  is,  therefore,  the  higher  mean  between  the  Ego 
and  the  external  world.  In  him  we  behold  ideas,  we  being  so 
strictly  united  with  him,  that  he  may  properly  be  called  the  place 
of  minds. 

The  philosophy  of  Malebranche,  whose  simple  thought  is  this, 
that  we  know  and  see  all  things  in  God, — shows  itself,  like  the 
occasionalism  of  Geulincx,  to  be  a  peculiar  attempt  to  stand  upon 
the  basis  of  the  Cartesian  philosophy,  and  with  its  fundamental 
thought  to  overcome  its  dualism. 

3.  Two  defects  or  inner  contradictions  have  manifested  them- 
selves in  the  philosophy  of  Descartes.  He  had  considered  mind 
and  matter  as  substances,  each  one  of  which  excluded  the  other 
from  itself,  and  had  sought  a  mediation  of  the  two.  But  with 
such  conditions  no  mediation  other  than  an  external  one  is  possi- 
ble. If  thought  and  existence  are  each  one  substance,  then  can 
they  only  negate  and  exclude  each  other.  Unnatural  theories,  like 
those  which  have  been  mentioned,  are  the  inevitable  result  of  this. 
The  simplest  way  out  of  the  difficulty  is  to  give  up  the  principle 
first  assumed,  to  strip  off  their  independence  from  the  two  oppo- 
sites,  and  instead  of  regarding  them  as  substances,  view  them  as 
accidents  of  one  substance.  This  way  of  escape  is  moreover  indi- 
cated by  a  particular  circumstance.  According  to  Descartes,  God 
is  the  infinite  substance,  the  peculiar  substance  in  the  proper  sense 
of  the  word.  Mind  and  matter  are  indeed  substances,  but  only  in 
relation  to  each  other ;  in  relation  to  God  they  are  dependent,  and 
not  substances.  This  is,  strictly  taken,  a  contradiction.  The 
true  consequence  were  rather  to  say  that  neither  the  Ego  {i.  e.  the 


184 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


individual  thinking)  nor  the  material  things  are  independent,  hu.i 
that  this  can  be  predicated  only  of  the  one  substance,  Grod ;  this 
substance  alone  has  a  real  being,  and  all  the  being  which  belongs 
to  individual  essences  these  latter  possess  not  as  a  substantial  be- 
ing, but  only  as  accidents  of  the  one  only  true  and  real  substance. 
Malebranche  approached  this  consequence.  With  him  the  bodily 
world  is  ideally  at  least  resolved  and  made  to  sink  in  God,  in 
whom  are  the  eternal  archetypes  of  all  things.  But  Spinoza  has 
most  decidedly  and  logically  adopted  this  consequence,  and  affirmed 
the  accidence  of  all  individual  being  and  the  exclusive  substan- 
tiality of  God  alone.  His  system  is  the  perfection  and  the  truth 
of  the  Cartesian. 


S  E  C  T  I  0  N  XX  YI. 

SPINOZA. 

Baruch  or  Benedict  Spinoza  was  born  at  Amsterdam,  Nov. 
24,  1632.  His  parents  were  Jews  of  Portuguese  descent,  and 
being  merchants  of  opulence,  they  gave  him  a  finished  education. 
He  studied  with  great  diligence  the  Bible  and  the  Talmud,  but 
soon  exchanged  the  pursuit  of  theology  for  the  study  of  physics 
and  the  works  of  Descartes.  He  early  became  dissatisfied  with 
Judaism,  and  presently  came  to  an  open  rupture  with  it,  though 
without  going  over  formally  to  Christianity.  In  order  to  escape 
the  persecutions  of  the  J ews,  who  had  excommunicated  him,  and 
who  even  went  so  far  as  to  make  an  attempt  upon  his  life,  he  left 
Amsterdam  and  betook  himself  to  Ehynsberg,  near  Leyden.  He 
finally  settled  down  at  the  Hague,  where  he  spent  his  life  in  the 
greatest  seclusion,  devoted  wholly  to  scientific  pursuits.  He  sup- 
ported himself  by  grinding  optic  glasses,  which  his  friends  sold 
for  him.  The  Elector  Palatine,  Charles  Louis,  ofi'ered  him  a  Pro- 
fessorship of  Philosophy  at  Heidelberg,  with  the  full  permission 
to  teach  as  he  chose,  but  Spinoza  declined  the  post.  Naturally 


SPINOZA. 


185 


of  a  weak  constitution,  which  consumption  had  for  many  years 
been  undermining,  Spinoza  died  at  the  age  of  44,  on  the  21st  of 
February,  1677.  In  his  life  there  was  mirrored  the  unclouded 
clearness  and  exalted  serenity  of  the  perfected  sage.  Abste- 
mious in  his  habits,  satisfied  with  little,  the  master  of  his  passions, 
never  intemperately  sad  nor  joyous,  gentle  and  benevolent,  with  a 
character  of  singular  excellence  and  purity,  he  faithfully  illustra- 
ted in  his  life,  the  doctrines  of  his  philosophy.  His  chief  work, 
the  Ethica^  appeared  the  year  of  his  death.  His  design  was  pro- 
bably to  have  published  it  during  his  life,  but  the  odious  report 
that  he  was  an  atheist  restrained  him.  The  friend  he  most  trusted, 
Louis  Mayer,  a  physician,  attended  to  its  publication  after  the 
author's  death  and  according  to  his  will. 

The  system  of  Spinoza  rests  upon  three  fundamental  concep- 
tions, from  which  all  the  rest  may  be  derived  with  mathematical 
necessity.  These  conceptions  are  that  of  substance,  of  attribute, 
and  of  mode. 

1.  Spinoza  starts  from  the  Cartesian  conception  of  substance  : 
substance  is  that  which  needs  nothing  other  for  its  existence. 
But  with  such  a  conception  there  can  exist  only  one  single  sub- 
stance. A  number  of  substances  like  that  of  Descartes  is  neces- 
sarily a  contradiction.  There  can  be  nothing  which  has  a  sub- 
stantial being  besides  the  one  substance  of  all  things.  This  one 
substance  Spinoza  calls  God.  Of  course,  with  such  a  view,  the 
Christian  idea  of  God,  the  notion  of  a  spiritual  and  personal 
being,  must  be  laid  aside.  Spinoza  expressly  declares,  that  his 
notion  of  God  is  entirely  different  from  that  of  the  Christian ;  he 
denied  that  understanding  and  will  could  be  predicated  of  God  ; 
he  ridiculed  those  who  supposed  that  God  worked  for  an  end, 
and  even  scorned  the  view  which  regarded  the  world  as  a  product 
of  the  Divine  willing  or  thinking.  God  is,  with  him,  only  sub- 
stance, and  nothing  more.  The  propositions  that  there  is  only 
one  God,  and  that  the  substance  of  all  things  is  only  one,  are 
with  him  identical. 

What  now  peculiarly  is  this  substance  ?  What  is  positive 
being  ?    This  question  it  is  very  difficult  to  answer  directly  from 


186 


A  HISTORY   OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


the  stand-point  of  Spinoza,  partly  because  a  definition,  according 
to  him,  must  contain  (i.  e.  must  be  genetically)  the  immediate 
cause  of  that  which  is  to  be  explained,  but  substance  is  uncreated 
and  can  have  no  cause  besides  itself ;  but  prominently  because 
Spinoza  held  that  every  determination  is  a  negation,  since  it  must 
indicate  a  want  of  existence,  a  relative  not-being.  ( Omnis  deter- 
minatio  est  negatio  is  an  expression  which,  though  he  uses  it 
only  occasionally,  expresses  the  fundamental  idea  of  his  whole 
system.)  Hence,  by  setting  up  any  positive  determinations  of 
being,  we  only  take  away  from  substance  its  infinity  and  make  it 
finite.  When  we  therefore  affirm  any  thing  concerning  it,  we 
can  only  speak  negatively,  e.  g.  that  it  has  no  foreign  cause,  that 
it  has  no  plurality,  that  it  cannot  be  divided,  etc.  It  is  even 
reluctantly  that  Spinoza  declares  concerning  it  that  it  is  one,  for 
this  predicate  might  readily  be  taken  numerically,  as  implying 
that  others,  the  many,  stood  over  against  it.  Thus  there  can 
remain  only  such  positive  affirmations  respecting  it  as  express  its 
absolute  reference  to  itself  In  this  sense  Spinoza  says  that  sub- 
stance is  the  cause  of  itself,  i.  e.  its  being  concludes  existence  in 
itself.  When  Spinoza  calls  it  eternal,  it  is  only  another  expression 
for  the  same  thought ;  for  by  eternity  he  understands  existence 
itself,  so  far  as  it  is  conceived  to  follow  from  the  definition  of  the 
thing,  in  a  sense  similar  to  that  in  which  geometricians  speak  of 
the  eternal  properties  of  figures.  Still  farther  he  calls  substance 
infinite,  because  the  conception  of  infinity  expressed  to  him  the 
conception  of  true  being,  the  absolute  affirmation  of  existence. 
So  also  the  expression,  Grod  is  free,  affirms  nothing  more  than 
those  already  mentioned,  viz.,  negatively,  that  every  foreign  re- 
straint is  excluded  from  him,  and  positively,  that  God  is  in  har- 
mony with  himself,  that  his  being  corresponds  to  the  laws  of  his 
essence. 

The  comprehensive  statement  for  the  above  is,  that  there  is 
only  one  infinite  substance  that  excludes  from  itself  all  determi- 
nation and  negation,  and  is  named  God,  or  natui-e. 

2.  Besides  the  infinite  substance  or  God,  Descartes  had  as- 
sumed two  other  substances  created  by  God,  viz.,  mind  (thought) 


SPINOZA. 


187 


and  matter  (extension).  These  two  Spinoza  considers  in  the  light 
of  attributes,  though,  like  Descartes,  he  receives  them  empirically 
What,  now,  is  the  relation  of  these  attributes  to  the  infinite  sub- 
stance ?  This  is  the  severe  question,  the  tendon- Achilles  of  Spi- 
noza's system.  They  cannot  be  essential  forms  in  which  the  sub- 
stance may  manifest  itself  or  appear,  for  this  would  make  them 
determine  the  essence  of  the  substance,  which  would  contradict  its 
conception  as  already  given.  Substance,  as  such,  is  neither  un- 
derstanding nor  extension.  If,  then,  the  two  attributes  do  not 
flow  out  of  the  essence  of  the  substance,  and  do  not  constitute 
the  substance,  there  remains  only  one  other  supposition,  viz.,  that 
they  are  externally  attached  to  the  substance ;  and  this  is,  in 
fact,  Spinoza's  view.  Attribute,  according  to  him,  is  that  which 
the  understanding  perceives  in  the  substance  as  constituting  its 
essence.  But  understanding,  as  Spinoza  expressly  says,  does  not 
belong  to  substance  as  such.  Attributes,  therefore,  are  those  de- 
terminations which  express  the  essence  of  the  substance  only  for 
the  perceiving  understanding ;  since  they  express  the  essence  of 
the  substance  in  a  determinate  way,  while  substance  itself  has  no 
determinate  way  of  being,  they  can  only  fall  outside  the  substance, 
viz.,  in  the  reflective  understanding.  To  the  substance  itself  it  is 
indifferent  whether  the  understanding  contemplate  it  under  these 
two  attributes  or  not ;  the  substance  in  itself  has  an  infinity  of 
attributes,  i.  e.  every  possible  attribute  which  is  not  a  limitation, 
may  be  predicated  of  it;  it  is  only  the  human  understanding 
which  attaches  these  two  attributes  to  the  substance,  and  it  aflaxes 
no  more  than  these,  because,  among  all  the  conceptions  it  can 
form,  these  alone  are  actually  positive,  or  express  a  reality.  God, 
or  the  substance,  is  therefore  thinking,  in  so  far  as  the  under- 
standing contemplates  him  under  the  attribute  of  thought,  and  is 
extended  in  so  far  as  the  understanding  contemj)lates  him  under 
the  attribute  of  extension.  It  is,  says  Spinoza — using  a  figure  to 
express  this  relation  of  substance  to  attribute — it  is,  like  a  surface 
reflecting  the  light,  which  (objectively  taken)  may  be  hot,  though, 
in  reference  to  the  man  looking  upon  it,  it  is  white.  More  accu- 
rately substance  is  a  surface,  standing  opposite  to  a  beholder  who 


188 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


can  see  only  througli  yellow  and  blue  glasses ;  to  whom,  therefore, 
the  surface  must  appear  either  yellow  or  blue,  though  it  is  neither 
the  one  nor  the  other. 

In  relation  to  substance,  therefore,  the  attributes  must  be 
apprehended  as  entirely  independent :  they  must  be  conceived 
through  themselves :  their  conception  is  not  dependent  upon  that 
of  substance.  I'his  is  necessarily  true;  for  since  the  substance 
can  have  no  determinateness,  then  the  attribute  which  is  its  deter- 
minate being,  cannot  be  explained  from  the  substance,  but  only 
through  itself.  Only  by  apprehending  the  attribute  independently 
can  the  unity  of  the  substance  be  maintained. 

In  relation  to  each  other,  the  attributes  are  to  be  taken  as 
opposites  strictly  and  determinately  diverse.  Between  the  bodily 
and  the  ideal  world  there  is  no  reciprocal  influence  nor  interac- 
tion :  a  body  can  only  spring  from  a  body,  and  an  idea  can  only 
have  an  idea  for  its  source.  Hence,  therefore,  neither  the  mind 
can  work  upon  the  body  nor  the  body  upon  the  mind.  Neverthe- 
less there  exists  between  the  two  worlds  a  perfect  harmony  and 
an  entire  parallelism.  It  is  one  and  the  same  substance  which  is 
conceived  under  each  of  the  two  attributes,  and  under  which  ore 
of  the  two  we  may  contemplate  it  is  indifferent  to  the  substance 
itself,  for  each  mode  of  contemplation  is  equally  correct.  From 
this  follows  at  once  the  proposition  of  Spinoza,  that  the  connec- 
tion of  ideas  and  of  things  is  the  same.  Hence  the  solution  to 
the  problem  of  the  relation  of  body  and  soul,  so  difficult  to  find 
from  the  Cartesian  stand-point,  is  readily  seen  from  that  of  Spi- 
noza. Body  and  soul  are  one  and  the  same  thing,  only  viewed 
under  different  attributes.  Mind  is  nothing  but  the  idea  of  body, 
i.  e.  it  is  the  same  thing  as  body,  only  that  it  is  viewed  under  the 
attribute  of  thought.  In  the  same  way  is  explained  the  apparent 
but  not  real  influence  of  the  body  upon  the  mind,  and  the  mind 
upon  the  body.  That  which,  in  one  point  of  view  is  bodily  mo- 
tion, in  another  is  an  act  of  thought.  In  short,  the  most  perfect 
parallelism  reigns  between  the  world  of  bodily  things  and  that  of 
ideas. 

3.  Individual  beings,  which  considered  under  the  attribute  of 


SPINOZA. 


189 


thouglit  are  ideas,  and  under  the  attribute  of  extension  are 
bodies,  Spinoza  comprehends  under  the  conception  of  accidence, 
or,  as  he  calls  it,  mode.  By  modes  we  are  therefore  to  under- 
stand the  changing  forms  of  substance.  The  modes  stand  related 
to  the  substance  as  the  rippling  -waves  of  the  sea  to  the  water  of 
the  sea,  as  forms  constantly  disappearing  and  never  having  a  real 
being.  In  fact  this  example  goes  too  far,  for  the  waves  of  the 
sea  are  at  least  a  part  of  the  water  of  the  bea,  while  the  modes, 
instead  of  being  parts  of  the  substance,  are  essentially  nothing  and 
without  being.  The  finite  has  no  existence  as  finite ;  only  the 
infinite  substance  has  actual  existence.  Substance,  therefore, 
could  not  be  regarded  more  falsely  than  if  it  should  be  viewed  as 
made  up  of  modes.  That  would  be,  Spinoza  remarks,  as  if  one 
should  say  that  the  line  is  made  up  out  of  points.  It  is  just  as 
false  to  affirm  that  Spinoza  identifies  God  and  the  world.  He 
identifies  them  so  little  that  he  would  rather  say  that  the  world, 
as  world,  i.  e.  as  an  aggregate  of  individuals,  does  not  at  all 
exist ;  we  might  rather  say  with  Hegel  that  he  denies  the  world 
(his  system  is  an  acosmism),  than  with  Bayle,  that  he  makes  every 
thing  God,  or  that  he  ascribes  divinity  to  every  thing. 

Whence  do  finite  things  or  individuals  arise,  if  they  can  have 
no  existence  by  the  side  of  substance  ?  They  are  only  the  product 
of  our  deceptive  apprehension.  There  are  two  chief  ways  of  know- 
ledge— the  intuitive,  through  the  reason,  and  the  imaginative. 
To  the  latter  belong  the  knowledge  of  experience,  and  all  that  is 
abstract,  superficial,  and  confused ;  to  the  former,  the  collection 
of  all  fitting  (adequate)  ideas.  It  is  only  the  fault  of  the  imagi- 
nation that  we  should  look  upon  the  world  as  a  manifoldness  of 
individuals;  the  manifoldness  is  only  a  form  of  representation. 
The  imagination  isolates  and  individualizes  what  the  reason  sees 
together  in  its  unity.  Hence  it  is  only  as  considered  through  the 
imagination  (experience  or  opinion)  that  modes  B,re  things ;  the 
reason  looks  upon  them  as  necessary,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing, 
as  eternal. 

Such  are  the  fundamental  thoughts  and  features  of  Spinoza's 
system.   His  practical  philosophy  yet  remains  to  be  characterized 


190 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


and  in  a  few  words.  Its  chief  propositions  follow  necessarily 
from  the  metaphysical  grounds  already  cited.  First,  it  follows 
from  these,  that  what  is  called  free  will  cannot  be  admitted.  For 
since  man  is  only  a  mode,  he,  like  every  other  mode,  stands  in  an 
endless  series  of  conditioning  causes,  and  no  free  will  can  there- 
fore be  predicated  of  him.  The  will  must  thus,  like  the  body 
(and  the  resolution  of  the  will  is  only  a  modification  of  the  body), 
be  determined  by  something  other  than  itself  Men  regard  them- 
selves as  free  only  because  they  are  conscious  of  their  actions  and 
not  of  the  determining  causes.  Just  so  the  notions  which  one 
commonly  connects  with  the  words  good  and  evil,  rest  on  an  error 
as  follows  at  once  from  the  conception  of  the  absolute  divine 
causality.  Good  and  evil  are  not  something  actually  in  the  things 
themselves,  but  only  express  relative  conceptions  which  we  have 
formed  from  a  comparison  of  things  with  one  another.  Thus,  by 
observing  certain  things  we  form  a  certain  universal  conception, 
which  we  thereupon  treat  as  though  it  were  the  rule  for  the  being 
and  acting  of  all  individuals,  and  if  any  individual  varies  from 
this  conception  we  fancy  that  it  does  not  correspond  to  its  nature, 
and  is  incomplete.  Evil  or  sin  is  therefore  only  something  rela- 
tive, for  nothing  happens  against  Grod's  will.  It  is  only  a  simple 
negation  or  deprivation,  which  only  seems  to  be  a  reality  in  our 
representation.  With  God  there  is  no  idea  of  the  evil.  What  is 
therefore  good  and  what  evil  ?  That  is  good  which  is  useful  to 
us,  and  that  evil  which  hinders  us  from  partaking  of  a  good. 
That,  moreover,  is  useful  to  us  which  brings  us  to  a  greater  reality, 
which  preserves  and  exalts  our  being.  But  our  true  being  is 
knowledge,  and  hence  that  only  is  useful  to  us  which  aids  us  in 
knowing ;  the  highest  good  is  the  knowledge  of  God  ;  the  highest 
virtue  of  the  mind  is  to  know  and  love  God.  From  the  know- 
ledge of  God  we  gain  the  highest  gladness  and  joy  of  the  mind, 
the  highest  blessedness.  Blessedness,  hence,  is  not  the  reward  of 
virtue,  but  virtue  itself 

The  grand  feature  of  Spinoza's  philosophy  is  that  it  buries 
every  thing  individual  and  particular,  as  a  finite,  in  the  abyss  of 
the  divine  substance.    With  its  view  unalterably  fixed  upon  the 


SPINOZA. 


191 


eternal  one,  it  loses  sight  of  every  thing  which  seems  actual  in 
the  ordinary  notions  of  men.  But  its  defect  consists  in  its  ina- 
bility to  transform  this  negative  abyss  of  substance  into  the  posi- 
tive ground  of  all-being  and  becoming.  The  substance  of  Spi- 
noza has  been  justly  compared  to  the  lair  of  a  lion,  which  many 
footsteps  enter,  but  from  which  none  emerge.  The  existence  of 
the  phenomenal  world,  though  it  be  only  the  apparent  and  decep- 
tive reality  of  the  finite,  Spinoza  does  not  explain.  With  his 
abstract  conception  of  substance  he  cannot  explain  it.  And  yet 
the  means  to  help  him  out  of  the  difficulty  lay  near  at  hand.  He 
failed  to  apply  universally  his  fundamental  principle  that  all  de- 
termination is  negation ;  he  applied  it  only  to  the  finite,  but  the 
abstract  infinite,  in  so  far  as  it  stands  over  against  the  finite,  is 
also  a  determinate ;  this  infinite  must  be  denied  by  its  negation, 
which  is  the  case  when  a  finite  world  is  posited,  Jacob  Boehme 
rightly  apprehended  this,  when  he  affirmed,  that  without  a  self- 
duplication,  without  an  ingress  into  the  limited,  the  finite,  the 
original  ground  of  things  is  an  empty  nothing  {cf.  §  XXIII.  8). 
So  the  original  ground  of  Spinoza  is  a  nothing,  a  purely  indeter- 
minate, because  with  him  substance  was  only  a  principle  of  unity 
and  not  also  a  principle  of  distinction,  because  its  attributes,  in- 
stead of  being  an  expression  of  an  actual  difi'erence  and  a  positive 
distinction  to  itself,  are  rather  wholly  indifiierent  to  itself.  The 
system  of  Spinoza  is  the  most  abstract  Monotheism  that  can  be 
thought.  It  is  not  accidental  that  its  author,  a  Jew,  should  have 
brought  out  again  this  view  of  the  world,  this  view  of  absolute 
identity,  for  it  is  in  a  certain  degree  with  him  only  a  consequence 
of  his  national  religion — an  echo  of  the  Orient. 


192 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


SECTION  XXVII. 

IDEALISM  AND  REALISM. 

We  have  now  reached  a  point  of  divergence  in  the  develop- 
ment of  philosophy.  Descartes  had  affirmed  and  attempted  to 
mediate  the  opposition,  between  thought  and  being,  mind  and 
matter.  This  mediation,  however,  was  hardly  successful,  for  the 
two  sides  of  the  opposition  he  had  fixed  in  their  widest  separa- 
tion, when  he  posited  them  as  two  substances  or  powers,  which 
reciprocally  negated  each  other.  The  followers  of  Descartes 
sought  a  more  satisfactory  mediation,  but  the  theories  to  which 
they  saw  themselves  driven,  only  indicated  the  more  clearly  that 
the  whole  premise  from  which  they  started  must  be  given  up. 
At  length  Spinoza  abandoned  the  false  notion,  and  took  away  its 
substantiality  from  each  of  the  two  opposed  principles.  Mind 
and  matter,  thought  and  extension,  are  now  one  in  the  infinite 
substance.  Yet  they  are  not  one  in  themselves,  which  would  be 
the  only  true  unity  of  the  two.  That  they  are  one  in  the  sub- 
stance is  of  little  avail,  since  they  are  indifi"erent  to  the  substance, 
and  are  not  immanent  distinctions  in  it.  Thus  even  with  Spinoza 
the  two  remain  strictly  separate.  The  ground  of  this  isolation 
we  find  in  the  fact  that  Spinoza  himself  did  not  sufficiently  re- 
nounce the  Cartesian  notion,  and  thus  could  not  escape  the  Car- 
tesian dualism.  With  him,  as  with  Descartes,  thought  is  onl^ 
thought,  and  extension  only  extension,  and  in  such  an  apprehen- 
sion of  the  two,  the  one  necessarily  excludes  the  other.  If  we 
would  find  an  inner  mediation  for  the  two,  we  must  cease  to  ab- 
stract every  thing  essential  from  each.  The  opposite  sides  must 
bo  mediated  even  in  their  strictest  opposition.  To  do  this,  two 
ways  alone  were  possible.  A  position  could  be  taken  either  on 
the  material  or  on  the  ideal  side,  and  the  attempt  made  to  explain 
the  ideal  under  the  material,  or  the  material  under  the  ideal, 
comprehending  one  through  the  other.    Both  these  attempts  were 


LOCKE. 


193 


in  fact  made,  and  at  about  the  same  time.  The  two  pafallel 
courses  of  a  one-sided  idealism,  and  a  one-sided  realism  (Empi- 
ricism, Sensualism,  Materialism),  now  begin  their  development. 


SECTION  XXVIII. 

LOCKE. 

The  founder  of  the  realistic  course  and  the  father  of  modern 
Empiricism  and  Materialism,  is  John  Locke,  an  Englishman. 
Thomas  Hohhes  (1588-1679)  was  his  predecessor  and  countryman, 
whose  name  we  need  here  only  mention,  as  it  has  no  importance 
except  for  the  history  of  natural  rights. 

John  Locke  was  born  at  Wrington,  1632.  His  student  years 
he  devoted  to  philosophy  and  prominently  to  medicine,  though  his 
weak  health  prevented  him  from  practising  as  a  physician.  Few 
cares  of  business  interrupted  his  leisure,  and  he  devoted  his  time 
mostly  to  literary  pursuits.  His  friendly  relations  with  Lord 
Anthony  Ashley,  afterwards  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  exerted  a 
weighty  influence  upon  his  course  in  life.  At  the  house  of  this 
distinguished  statesman  and  author  he  always  found  the  most 
cordial  reception,  and  an  intercourse  with  the  most  important 
men  of  England.  In  the  year  1670  he  sketched  for  a  number  of 
friends  the  first  plan  of  his  famous  Essay  on  the  Human  Under- 
standing, though  the  completed  work  did  not  appear  till  1689. 
Locke  died  aged  72  in  the  year  1704.  His  writings  are  charac- 
terized by  clearness  and  precision,  openness  and  determinateness. 
More  acute  than  profound  in  his  philosophizing,  he  does  not  in 
this  respect  belie  the  characteristic  of  his  nation.  The  funda- 
mental thoughts  and  results  of  his  philosophy  have  now  become 
common  property,  especially  among  the  English,  though  it  should 
not  therefore  be  forgotten  that  he  is  the  first  who  has  scientifically 
established  them,  and  is,  on  this  account,  entitled  to  a  true  place 
9 


194 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


in  the  history  of  philosophy,  even  though  his  principle  was  want* 
ing  in  an  inner  capacity  for  development. 

Locke's  Philosophy  {i.  e.  his  theory  of  knowledge,  for  his 
whole  philosophizing  expends  itself  in  investigating  the  faculty  of 
knowing)  rests  upon  two  thoughts,  to  which  he  never  ceases  to  re- 
vert :  first  (negatively)^  there  are  no  innate  ideas ;  second  (posi- 
tively), all  our  knowledge  arises  from  experience. 

Many,  says  Locke,  suppose  that  there  are  innate  ideas  which 
the  soul  receives  coetaneous  with  its  origin,  and  brings  with  it  into 
the  world.  In  order  to  prove  that  these  ideas  are  innate,  it  is 
said  that  they  universally  exist,  and  are  universally  valid  with 
all  men.  But  admitting  that  this  were  so,  such  a  fact  would 
prove  nothing  if  this  universal  harmony  could  be  explained  in 
any  other  way.  But  men  mistake  when  they  claim  such  a  fact. 
There  is,  in  reality,  no  fundamental  proposition,  theoretical  or 
practical,  which  would  be  universally  admitted.  Certainly  there 
is  no  such  practical  principle,  for  the  example  of  different  people 
as  well  as  of  different  ages  shows  that  there  is  no  moral  rule  uni  • 
versally  admitted  as  valid.  Neither  is  there  a  theoretical  one^ 
for  even  those  propositions  which  might  lay  the  strongest  claim 
to  be  universally  valid,  e.  g.  the  proposition, — "  what  is,  is,"  or — 
''it  is  imposible  that  one  and  the  same  thing  should  be  and 
not  be  at  the  same  time," — receive  by  no  means  a  universal  assent. 
Children  and  idiots  have  no  notion  of  these  principles,  and  even 
uncultivated  men  know  nothing  of  these  abstract  propositions. 
They  cannot  therefore  have  been  imprinted  on  all  men  by  nature. 
If  ideas  were  innate,  then  they  must  be  known  by  all  from  earliest 
childhood.  For  "  to  be  in  the  understanding,"  and  "  to  become 
known,"  is  one  and  the  same  thing.  The  assertion  therefore  that 
these  ideas  are  imprinted  on  the  understanding  while  it  does  not 
know  it,  is  hence  a  manifest  contradiction.  J ust  as  little  is  gained 
by  the  subterfuge,  that  these  principles  come  into  the  conscious- 
ness so  soon  as  men  use  their  reason.  This  affirmation  is  direct- 
ly false,  for  these  maxims  which  are  called  universal  come  into  the 
consciousness  much  later  than  a  great  deal  of  other  knowledge, 
and  children,  e.  g.  give  many  proofs  of  their  use  of  reason  before 


LOCKE. 


195 


they  know  that  it  is  impossible  that  a  thing  should  be  and  at  the 
same  time  not  be.  It  is  only  correct  to  say  that  no  one  becomes 
conscious  of  these  propositions  without  reasoning, — but  to  say 
that  they  are  all  known  with  the  first  reasoning  is  false.  More- 
over, that  which  is  first  known  is  not  universal  propositions,  but 
relates  to  individual  impressions.  The  child  knows  that  sweet 
is  not  bitter  long  before  he  understands  the  logical  proposition  of 
contradiction.  He  who  carefully  bethinks  himself,  will  hesitate 
before  he  affirms  that  particular  dicta  as  "  sweet  is  not  bitter,"  are 
derived  from  universal  ones.  If  the  universal  propositions  were 
innate,  then  must  they  be  the  first  in  the  consciousness  of  the 
child ;  for  that  which  nature  has  stamped  upon  th*  human  soul 
must  come  into  consciousness  antecedently  to  any  thing  which 
she  has  not  written  there.  Consequently,  if  there  are  no  innate 
ideas,  either  theoretical  or  practical,  there  can  be  just  as 
truly  no  innate  art  nor  science.  The  understanding  (or  the  soul) 
is  essentially  a  tabula  rasa, — a  blank  and  void  space,  a  white 
paper  on  which  nothing  is  written. 

How  now  does  the  understanding  become  possessed  of  ideas  ? 
Only  through  experience,  upon  which  all  knowledge  rests,  and  on 
which  as  its  principle  all  knowledge  depends.  Experience  itself 
is  twofold ; .  either  it  arises  through  the  perception  of  external  ob- 
jects by  means  of  the  sense,  in  which  case  we  call  it  sensation ; 
or  it  is  a  perception  of  the  activities  of  our  own  understanding,  in 
which  case  it  is  named  the  inner  sense,  or,  better,  reflection. 
Sensation  and  reflection  give  to  the  understanding  all  its  ideas ; 
they  are  the  windows  through  which  alone  the  light  of  ideas  falls 
upon  the  naturally  dark  space  of  the  mind ;  external  objects  fur- 
nish us  with  the  ideas  of  sensible  qualities,  and  the  inner  object, 
which  is  the  understanding  itself,  ofi'ers  us  the  ideas  of  its  own 
activities.  To  show  the  derivation  and  to  give  an  explanation  of 
all  the  ideas  derived  from  both  is  the  problem  of  the  Lockian  phi- 
losophy. For  this  end  Locke  divides  ideas  (representations  or 
notions)  into  simple  and  compound.  Simple  ideas,  he  names  those 
which  are  impressed  from  without  upon  the  understanding  while 
it  remains  wholly  passive,  just  as  the  images  of  certain  objects  are 


196 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


represented  in  a  mirror.  These  simple  ideas  are  partly  such  as 
come  to  the  understanding  through  an  individual  sense,  e.  g.  the 
ideas  of  color,  which  are  furnished  to  the  mind  through  the  eye, 
or  those  of  sound,  which  come  to  it  through  the  ear,  or  those  of 
solidity  or  impenetrability,  which  we  receive  through  the  touch ; 
partly  such  as  a  number  of  senses  have  combined  to  give  us,  as 
those  of  space  and  of  motion,  of  which  we  become  conscious  by 
means  of  the  sense  both  of  touch  and  of  sight ;  partly  such  as  we 
receive  through  reflection,  as  the  idea  of  thought  and  of  will;  and 
partly^  in  fine,  such  as  arise  from  both  sensation  and  reflection 
combined,  e.  g.  power,  unity,  &c.  These  simple  ideas  form  the 
material,  as  it  were  the  letters  of  all  our  knowledge.  But  now  as 
language  arises  from  a  manifold  combination  of  letters,  syllables 
and  words,  so  the  understanding  forms  complex  ideas  by  the  mani- 
fold combination  of  simj^le  ideas  with  each  other.  The  complex 
ideas  may  be  referred  to  three  classes,  viz. :  the  ideas  of  mode,  of 
substance,  and  of  relation.  Under  the  ideas  of  mode,  Locke  con- 
siders the  modifications  of  space  (as  distance,  measurement,  im- 
mensity, surface,  figure,  &c.),  of  time  (as  succession,  duration, 
eternity),  of  thought  (perception,  memory,  abstraction,  &c.),  of 
number,  power,  &c.  Special  attention  is  given  by  Locke  to  the 
conception  of  substance.  He  exj^lains  the  origin  of  tliis  concep- 
tion in  this  way,  viz. :  we  find  both  in  sensation  and  reflection, 
that  a  certain  number  of  simple  ideas  seem  often  to  be  connected 
together.  But  as  we  cannot  divest  ourselves  of  the  impression 
that  these  simple  ideas  have  not  been  produced  through  them- 
selves, we  are  accustomed  to  furnish  them  with  a  ground  in  some 
existing  substratum,  which  we  indicate  with  the  word  substance. 
Substance  is  something  unknown,  and  is  conceived  of  as  possessing 
those  qualities  which  are  necessary  to  furnish  us  with  simple  ideas. 
But  from  the  fact  that  substance  is  a  product  of  our  subjective 
thinking,  it  does  not  follow  that  it  has  no  existence  outside  of  our- 
selves. On  the  contrary,  this  is  distinguished  from  all  other  com- 
plex ideas  in  the  fact  that  this  is  an  idea  which  has  its  archetj^pe 
distinct  from  ourselves,  and  possesses  objective  reality,  while  other 
complex  ideas  are  formed  by  the  mind  at  pleasure,  and  have  no 


LOCKE. 


197 


reality  corresponding  to  them  external  to  the  mind.  We  do  not 
know  what  is  the  archetype  of  substance,  and  of  the  substance 
itself  we  are  acquainted  only  with  its  attributes.  From  consider- 
ing the  conception  of  substance,  Locke  next  passes  over  to  the  idea 
of  relation.  A  relation  arises  when  the  understanding  has  con- 
nected two  things  with  each  other,  in  such  a  way,  that  in  consider- 
ing them  it  passes  over  from  the  one  to  the  other.  Every  thing 
is  capable  of  being  brought  by  the  understanding  into  relation,  or 
what  is  the  same  thing,  to  be  transformed  into  something  relative. 
It  is  consequently  impossible  to  enumerate  the  sum  of  every  pos- 
sible relation.  Hence  Locke  treats  only  of  some  of  the  more 
weighty  conceptions  of  relation,  among  others,  that  of  identity  and 
difference,  but  especially  that  of  cause  and  effect.  The  idea  of 
cause  and  effect  arises  when  our  understanding  perceives  that  any 
thing  whatsoever,  be  it  substance  or  quality,  begins  to  exist 
through  the  activity  of  another.  So  much  concerning  ideas.  The 
combination  of  ideas  among  themselves  gives  the  conception  of 
knowing.  Hence  knowledge  stands  in  the  same  relation  to  the 
simple  and  complex  ideas  as  a  proposition  does  to  the  letters,  syl- 
lables and  words  which  compose  it.  From  this  it  follows  that  our 
knowledge  does  not  pass  beyond  the  compass  of  our  ideas,  and 
hence  that  it  is  bounded  by  experience. 

These  are  the  prominent  thoughts  in  the  Lockian  philosophy. 
Its  empiricism  is  clear  as  day.  The  mind,  according  to  it,  is  in 
itself  bare,  and  only  a  mirror  of  the  outer  world, — a  dark  space 
which  passively  receives  the  images  of  external  objects  ;  its  whole 
content  is  made  by  the  impressions  furnished  it  by  material  things. 
Nihil  est  in  intellectti,  quod  nonfuerit  in  sensu — is  the  watch- 
word of  this  standpoint.  While  Locke,  by  this  proposition,  ex- 
presses the  undoubted  preponderance  of  the  material  over  the 
intellectual,  he  does  so  still  more  decisively  when  he  declares  that 
it  is  possible  and  even  probable  that  the  mind  is  a  material  essence. 
He  does  not  admit  the  reverse  possibility,  that  material  things 
may  be  classed  under  the  intellectual  as  a  special  kind.  Hence 
with  him  mind  is  the  secondary  to  matter,  and  hence  he  is  seen  to 
take  the  characteristic  standpoint  of  realism  {cf.  ^  XXVII). 


198 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


It  is  true  that  Locke  was  not  always  logically  consistent,  and  in 
many  points  did  not  thoroughly  carry  out  his  empiricism :  but  we 
can  clearly  see  that  the  road  which  will  be  taken  in  the  farther 
development  of  this  direction,  will  result  in  a  thorough  denial  of 
the  ideal  factor. 

The  empiricism  of  Locke,  wholly  national  as  it  is,  soon  be- 
came the  ruling  philosophy  in  England.  Standing  on  its  basis 
we  find  Isaac  Newton,  the  great  mathematician  (1642-1727), 
Samuel  Clarke^  a  disciple  of  Newton,  whose  chief  attention  was 
given  to  moral  philosophy  (1675-1729),  the  English  moralists  of 
this  period,  William  Wollaston  (1659-1724),  the  Earl  of  Shaftes- 
hury  (1671-1713),  Francis  Hutcheson  (1694-1746),  and  even 
Bome  opponents  of  Locke,  as  Peter  Brown,  who  died  1735. 


SECTION  XXIX. 

HUME. 

As  already  remarked,  Locke  had  not  been  wholly  consistent 
with  the  standpoint  of  empiricism.  Though  conceding  to  ma- 
terial objects  a  decided  superiority  above  the  thinking  subject, 
there  was  yet  one  point,  viz.,  the  recognition  of  substance,  where 
lie  claimed  for  the  thinking  a  power  above  the  objective  world. 
Among  all  the  comjolex  ideas  which  are  formed  by  the  subjective 
thinking,  the  idea  of  substance  is,  according  to  Locke,  the  only 
one  which  has  objective  reality;  all  the  rest  being  purely  sub- 
jective, with  nothing  actually  corresponding  to  them  in  the  ob- 
jective world.  But  in  the  very  fact  that  the  subjective  thinking 
places  the  conception  of  substance,  which  it  has  formed,  in  the 
objective  world,  it  affirms  an  objective  relation  of  things,  an  ob- 
jective connection  of  them  among  each  other,  and  an  existing 
rationality.  The  reason  of  the  subject  in  this  respect  stands  in  a 
certain  degree  above  the  objective  world,  for  the  relation  of  sub- 
Btance  is  not  derived  immediately  from  the  world  of  sense,  and  is 


HUME. 


199 


no  product  of  sensation  nor  of  perception  through  the  sense.  On 
a  pure  empirical  standpoint — and  such  was  Locke's — it  was 
therefore  illogical  to  allow  the  conception  of  substance  to  remain 
possessed  of  objective  being.  If  the  understanding  is  essentially 
a  bare  and  empty  space,  a  white  unwritten  paper,  if  its  whole  con- 
tent of  objective  knowledge  consists  in  the  impressions  made  upon 
it  by  material  things,  then  must  the  conception  of  substance  also 
be  explained  as  a  mere  subjective  notion,  a  union  of  ideas  joined 
together  at  the  mind's  pleasure,  and  the  subject  itself,  thus  fully 
deprived  of  every  thing  to  which  it  could  lay  claim,  Jiust  become 
wholly  subordinated  to  the  material  world.  This  stride  to  a 
logical  empiricism  Hume  has  made  in  his  criticism  on  the  concep- 
tion of  causality. 

David  Hume  was  born  at  Edinburgh  1711.  Devoted  in  youth 
to  the  study  of  law,  then  for  some  time  a  merchant,  he  afterwards 
gave  his  attention  exclusively  to  philosophy  and  history.  His  first 
literary  attempt  was  hardly  noticed.  A  more  favorable  reception 
was,  however,  given  to  his  Essays,''^ — of  which  he  published 
different  collections  from  1742  to  1757,  making  in  all  five  vol- 
um-es.  In  these  Hume  has  treated  philosophical  themes  as  a 
thoughtful  and  cultivated  man  of  the  world,  but  without  any  strict 
systematic  connection.  In  1752  he  was  elected  to  the  care  of  a 
public  library  in  Edinburgh,  and  began  in  this  same  year  his 
famous  history  of  England.  Afterwards  he  became  secretary  of 
legation  at  Paris,  where  he  became  acquainted  with  Kousseau. 
In  1767  he  became  under  secretary  of  state,  an  office,  however, 
which  he  filled  for  only  a  brief  period.  His  last  years  were  spent 
in  Edinburgh,  in  a  quiet  and  contented  seclusion.  He  died 
1776. 

The  centre  of  Hume's  philosophizing  is  his  criticism  of  the 
conception  of  cause.  Locke  had  already  expressed  the  thought 
that  we  attain  the  conception  of  substance  only  by  the  habit  of 
always  seeing  certain  modes  together.  Hume  takes  up  this 
thought  with  earnestness.  Whence  do  we  know,  he  asks,  that 
two  things  stand  to  each  other  in  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  ? 
We  do  not  know  it  apriori,  for  since  the  effect  is  something  other 


200 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


than  the  cause,  while  knowledge  apriori  embraces  only  that  which 
is  identical,  the  effect  cannot  thus  be  discovered  in  the  cause; 
neither  do  we  know  it  through  experience,  for  experience  reveals 
to  us  only  the  succession  in  time  of  two  facts.  All  our  conclu- 
sions from  experience,  therefore,  rest  simply  upon  habit.  Be- 
cause we  are  in  the  habit  of  seeing  that  one  thing  is  followed  in 
time  by  another,  do  we  form  the  notion  that  the  latter  must  fol- 
low out  of  the  former :  we  make  the  relation  of  causality  out  of 
the  relation  of  succession ;  but  a  connection  in  time  is  naturally 
something  other  than  a  causal  connection.  Hence,  with  the  con- 
ception of  causality,  we  transcend  that  which  is  given  in  percep- 
tion and  form  for  ourselves,  notions  to  which  we  are  properly  not 
entitled. — That  which  belongs  to  causality  belongs  to  every  neces- 
sary relation.  We  find  within  us  conceptions,  as  those  of  power 
and  expression,  and  in  general  that  of  necessary  connection ;  but 
let  us  note  how  we  attain  these  :  not  through  sensation,  for 
though  external  objects  seem  to  us  to  have  coetaneousness  of 
being,  they  show  us  no  necessary  connection.  Do  they  then  come 
through  reflection  ?  True,  it  seems  as  if  we  might  get  the  idea 
of  power  by  seeing  that  the  organs  of  our  body  move  in  conse- 
quence of  the  dictate  of  our  mind.  But  since  we  do  not  know 
the  means  through  which  the  mind  works,  and  since  all  the  or- 
gans of  the  body  cannot  be  moved  by  the  will,  it  follows,  that  we 
are  indeed  pointed  to  experience  in  reference  to  this  activity ;  but 
since  experience  can  show  us  only  a  frequent  conjunction,  but  no 
real  connection,  it  follows  also  that  we  come  to  the  conception  of 
power  as  of  every  necessary  connection,  only  because  we  are  ac- 
customed to  a  transcending  process  in  our  notions.  All  concep- 
tions which  express  a  relation  of  necessity,  all  knowledge  pre- 
sumptive of  a  real  objective  connection  of  things,  rests  therefore 
ultimately  only  upon  the  association  of  ideas.  Having  denied 
the  conception  of  substance,  Hume  was  led  also  to  deny  that  of 
the  Ego  or  self  If  the  Ego  or  self  really  exists,  it  must  be  a 
substance  possessing  inherent  qualities.  But  since  our  concep- 
tion of  substance  is  purely  subjective,  without  objective  reality, 
it  follows  that  there  is  no  correspondent  reality  to  our  conception 


CONDILLAC. 


201 


of  the  self  or  the  Ego.  The  self  or  the  Ego  is,  in  fact,  nothing 
other  than  a  compound  of  many  notions  following  rapidly  upon 
each  other ;  and  under  this  compound  we  lay  a  conceived  sub- 
stratum, which  we  call  soul,  self,  Ego  (I).  The  self,  or  the  Ego, 
rests  wholly  on  an  illusion.  Of  course,  with  such  premises, 
nothing  can  be  said  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  If  the  soul 
is  only  the  compound  of  our  notions,  it  necessarily  ceases  with 
the  notions — that  which  is  compounded  of  the  movements  of  the 
body  dies  with  those  movements. 

There  needs  no  further  proof,  than  simply  to  ;itter  these  chief 
thoughts  of  Hume,  to  show  that  his  scepticism  is  only  a  logical 
carrying  out  of  Locke's  empiricism.  Every  determination  of 
universality  and  necessity  must  fall  away,  if  we  derive  our  knowl- 
edge only  from  perceptions  through  the  sense ;  these  determina- 
tions cannot  be  comprised  in  sensation. 


SECTION  XXX. 

CONDILLAC. 

The  French  took  up  the  problem  of  carrying  out  the  empiri- 
cism of  Locke,  to  its  ultimate  consequences  in  sensualism  and 
materialism.  Although  this  empiricism  had  sprung  up  on  English 
soil,  and  had  soon  become  universally  prevalent  there,  it  was  re- 
served for  France  to  push  it  to  the  last  extreme,  and  show  that  it 
overthrew  all  the  foundations  of  moral  and  religious  life.  This 
final  consequence  of  empiricism  did  not  correspond  to  the  English 
national  character.  But  on  the  contrary,  both  the  empiricism  of 
Locke,  and  the  scepticism  of  Hume,  found  themselves  opposed 
in  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  by  a  reaction  in  the 
Scotch  philosophy  [Heid  1701-1799,  Beattie,  Oswald,  Dugald 
Stewart,  1753-1828).  The  attempt  was  here  made  to  establish 
certain  principles  of  truth  as  innate  and  immanent  in  the  sub- 
ject, which  should  avail  both  against  the  tabula  rasa  of  Locke. 
9* 


202 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


and  the  scepticism  of  Hume.  These  principles  were  taken  in  a 
thoroughly  English  way,  as  those  of  common  sense,  as  facts  of 
experience,  as  facts  of  the  moral  instinct  and  sound  human  un- 
derstanding; as  something  empirically  given,  and  found  in  the 
common  consciousness  by  self-contemplation  and  reflection.  But 
in  France,  on  the  other  hand,  there  was  such  a  public  and  social 
condition  of  things  during  the  eighteenth  century,  that  we  can 
only  regard  the  systems  of  materialism  and  egoistic  moralism 
which  here  appeared,  as  the  last  practical  consequences  of  the 
empirical  standpoint, — to  be  the  natural  result  of  the  universal 
desolation.  The  expression  of  a  lady  respecting  the  system  of 
Helvetius  is  well  known,  that  it  uttered  only  the  secret  of  all  the 
world. 

Most  closely  connected  with  the  empiricism  of  Locke,  is  the 
sensualism  of  the  Abbe  Condillac.  Condillac  was  born  at  Gre- 
noble, 1715.  In  his  first  writings  he  adhered  to  Locke,  but  sub- 
sequently passed  beyond  him,  and  sought  to  ground  a  philosophi- 
cal standpoint  of  his  own.  He  was  elected  a  member  of  the 
French  Academy  in  1768,  and  died  in  1780.  His  writings  fill 
twenty-three  volumes,  and  have  their  origin  in  a  moral  and  re- 
ligious interest. 

Condillac,  like  Locke,  started  with  the  proposition  that  all 
our  knowledge  comes  from  experience.  While,  however,  Locke 
had  indicated  two  sources  for  this  knowledge,  sensation  and  re- 
flection, the  outer  and  the  inner  sense,  Condillac  referred  reflec- 
tion to  sensation,  and  reduced  the  two  sources  to  one.  Reflection 
is,  with  him,  only  sensation  ;  all  intellectual  occurrences,  even  the 
combination  of  ideas  and  volition,  are  to  be  regarded  only  as 
modified  sensations.  It  is  the  chief  problem  and  content  of  Con- 
dillac's  philosophizing  to  carry  out  this  thought,  and  derive  the 
diff"erent  functions  of  the  soul  out  of  the  sensations  of  the  outer 
sense.  He  illustrates  this  thought  by  a  statue,  which  has  been 
made  with  a  perfect  internal  organization  like  a  man,  but  which 
possesses  no  ideas,  and  in  which  only  gradually  one  sense  after 
another  awakens  and  fills  the  soul  with  impressions.  In  such  a 
view  man  stands  on  the  same  footing  as  the  brute,  for  all  hia 


HELVETIUS. 


203 


knowledge  and  all  his  incentives  to  action  he  receives  from  sen- 
sation. Condillac  consequently  names  men  perfect  animals,  and 
brutes  imperfect  men.  Still  he  revolts  from  affirming  the  mate- 
riality of  the  soul,  and  denying  the  existence  of  God.  These 
ultimate  consequences  of  sensualism  were  first  drawn  by  others 
after  him,  as  would  naturally  enough  follow.  As  sensualism 
affirmed  that  truth  or  being  could  only  be  perceived  through  the 
sense,  so  we  have  only  to  reverse  this  proposition,  and  have  the 
thesis  of  materialism,  viz.  :  the  sensible  alone  is,  there  is  no  other 
being  but  material  being. 


SECTION  XXXI. 

HELVETIUS. 

Helvetius  has  exhibited  the  moral  consequences  of  the  sen- 
sualistic  standpoint.  While  theoretical  sensualism  affirms  that 
all  our  knowledge  is  determined  by  sensation,  practical  sensualism 
adds  to  this  the  analogous  proposition  that  all  our  volition  springs 
from  the  same  source,  and  is  regulated  by  the  sensuous  desire. 
Helvetius  adopted  it  as  the  principle  of  morals  to  satisfy  this 
sensuous  desire. 

Helvetius  was  born  at  Paris  in  1715.  Gaining  a  position  in 
his  twenty-third  year  as  farmer-general,  he  found  himself  early  in 
the  possession  of  a  rich  income,  but  after  a  few  years  he  found 
this  office  so  vexatious  that  he  abandoned  it.  The  study  of 
Locke  decided  his  philosophic  direction.  Helvetius  wrote  his 
famed  work,  de  V Esprit,  after  he  had  given  up  his  office  and 
withdrawn  himself  in  seclusion.  It  appeared  in  1758,  and  at- 
tracted a  great  attention  at  home  and  abroad,  though  it  drew 
upon  him  a  violent  persecution,  especially  from  the  clergy.  It 
was  fortunate  for  him  that  the  persecution  satisfied  itself  with 
suppressing  his  book.  The  repose  in  which  he  spent  his  later 
years  was  interrupted  only  by  two  journeys  which  he  made  to 


204 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


Germany  and  England.  He  died  in  1771.  His  personal  char- 
acter was  wholly  estimable,  full  of  kindness  and  generosity.  Es- 
pecially in  his  place  as  farmer-general  he  showed  himself  benev- 
olent towards  the  poor,  and  resolute  against  the  encroachments 
of  his  subalterns.  The  style  of  his  writings  is  easy  and 
elegant. 

Self-love  or  interest,  says  Helvetius,  is  the  lever  of  all  our 
mental  activities.  Even  that  activity  which  is  purely  intellectual, 
our  instinct  towards  knowledge,  our  forming  of  ideas,  rests  upon 
this.  Since  now  all  self-love  refers  essentially  only  to  bodily 
pleasure,  it  follows  that  every  mental  occurrence  within  us  has  its 
peculiar  source  only  in  the  striving  after  this  pleasure ;  but  in 
saying  this,  we  have  only  affirmed  where  the  principle  of  all  mo- 
rality is  to  be  sought.  It  is  an  absurdity  to  require  a  man  to  do 
the  good  simply  for  its  own  sake.  This  is  just  as  impracticable 
as  that  he  should  do  the  evil  simply  for  the  sake  of  the  evil. 
Hence  if  morality  would  not  be  wholly  fruitless,  it  must  return 
to  its  empirical  basis,  and  venture  to  adopt  the  true  principle  of 
all  acting,  viz.,  sensuous  pleasure  and  pain,  or,  in  other  words,  self- 
ishness as  an  actual  moral  principle.  Hence,  as  a  correct  legis- 
lation is  that  which  secures  obedience  to  its  laws  through  reward 
and  punishment,  i.  e.  through  selfishness,  so  will  a  correct  system 
of  morals  be  that  which  derives  the  duties  of  men  from  self-love, 
which  shows  that  that  which  is  forbidden  is  something  which  is 
followed  by  disagreeable  consequences.  A  system  of  ethics  which 
does  not  involve  the  self-interest  of  men,  or  which  wars  against 
this,  necessarily  remains  fruitless. 


THE  FRENCH  CLEARING  UP. 


205 


SECTION  XXXII. 

THE   FRENCH    CLEARING   UP  (AufJcIaerung)    AND  MATE- 
RIALISM. 

1.  It  has  already  been  remarked  (§  XXX.)  that  the  carrying 
out  of  empiricism  to  its  extremes,  as  was  attempted  in  France, 
was  most  intimately  connected  with  the  general  condition  of  the 
French  people  and  state,  in  the  period  before  the  revolution.  The 
contradictory  element  in  the  character  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the 
external  and  dualistic  relation  to  the  spiritual  world,  had  developed 
itself  in  Catholic  France  till  it  had  corrupted  and  destroyed  every 
condition.  Morality,  mainly  through  the  influence  of  a  licentious 
court,  had  become  wholly  corrupted ;  the  state  had  sunk  to  an 
unbridled  despotism,  and  the  church  to  a  hierarchy  as  hypocritical 
as  it  was  powerful.  Thus,  as  every  intellectual  edifice  was  threat- 
ened with  ruin,  nature,  as  matter  without  intellect,  as  the  object 
of  sensation  and  desire,  alone  remained.  Yet  it  is  not  the  ma- 
terialistic extreme  which  constitutes  the  peculiar  character  and 
tendency  of  the  period  now  before  us.  The  common  character  of 
the  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  rather,  and  most 
prominently,  the  opposition  against  every  ruling  restraint,  and 
perversion  in  morals,  religion,  and  the  state.  Their  criticism  and 
polemics,  which  were  much  more  ingenious  and  eloquent  than 
strictly  scientific,  were  directed  against  the  whole  realm  of  tra- 
ditional and  given  and  positive  notions.  They  sought  to  show 
the  contradiction  between  the  existing  elements  in  the  state  and 
the  church,  and  the  incontrovertible  demands  of  the  reason.  They 
sought  to  overthrow  in  the  faith  of  the  world  every  fixed  opinion 
which  had  not  been  established  in  the  eye  of  reason,  and  to  give 
the  thinking  man  the  full  consciousness  of  his  pure  freedom.  In 
order  that  we  may  correctly  estimate  the  merit  of  these  men,  we 
must  bring  before  us  the  French  world  of  that  age  against  which 
their  attacks  were  directed  ;  the  dissoluteness  of  a  pitiful  court, 


206 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


the  slavish  obedience  exacted  by  a  corrupt  priesthood,  a  church 
sunken  into  decay  yet  seeking  worldly  honor,  a  state  constitution, 
a  condition  of  rights  and  of  society,  which  must  be  profoundly 
revolting  to  every  thinking  man  and  every  moral  feeling.  It  ia 
the  immortal  merit  of  these  men  that  they  gave  over  to  scorn  and 
hatred  the  abjectness  and  hypocrisy  which  then  reigned ;  that 
they  brought  the  minds  of  men  to  look  with  indifference  upon  the 
idols  of  the  world,  and  awakened  within  them  a  consciousness  of 
their  own  autonomy. 

2.  The  most  famous  and  influential  actor  in  this  period  of  the 
French  clearing  up,  is  Voltaire  (1694-1778).  Though  a  writer 
of  great  versatility,  rather  than  a  philosopher,  there  was  yet  no 
philosopher  of  that  time  who  exerted  so  powerful  an  influence 
upon  the  whole  thinking  of  his  country  and  his  age.  Yoltaire 
was  no  atheist.  On  the  contrary,  he  regarded  the  belief  in  a 
Supreme  Being  to  be  so  necessary,  that  he  once  said  that  if  there 
were  no  God  we  should  be  under  the  necessity  of  inventing  one. 
He  was  just  as  little  disposed  to  deny  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
though  he  often  expressed  his  doubts  upon  it.  He  regarded  the 
atheistic  materialism  of  a  La  Mettrie  as  nothing  but  nonsense.  In 
these  respects,  therefore,  he  is  far  removed  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  philosophers  who  followed  him.  His  whole  hatred  was  expend- 
ed against  Christianity  as  a  positive  religion.  To  destroy  this 
system  he  considered  as  his  peculiar  mission,  and  he  left  no  means 
untried  to  attain  this  anxiously  longed-for  end.  His  unwearied 
warfare  against  every  positive  religion  prepared  the  way  and  gave 
weapons  for  the  attacks  against  spiritualism  which  followed. 

,  3.  The  Encyclopedists  had  a  more  decidedly  sceptical  relation 
to  the  principles  and  the  basis  of  spiritualism.  The  philosophical 
Encyclopedia  established  hj Diderot  (1713-1784),  and  published  by 
him  in  connection  with  d'Alembert,  is  a  memorable  monument  of 
the  ruling  spirit  in  France  in  the  time  before  the  revolution.  It 
was  the  pride  of  France  at  that  age,  because  it  expressed  in  a 
splendid  and  universally  accessible  form  the  inner  consciousness 
of  the  French  people.  With  the  keenest  wit  it  reasoned  away 
law  from  the  state,  and  freedom  from  morality,  and  spirit  and 


THE  FRENCH  CLEARING  UP. 


207 


God  from  nature,  though  all  this  was  done  only  in  scRttered,  and, 
for  the  most  part,  timorous  intimations.  In  Diderot's  independent 
writings  we  find  talent  of  much  philosophic  importance  united 
with  great  earnestness.  But  it  is  very  difficult  to  fix  and  accu- 
rately to  limit  his  philosophic  views,  since  they  were  very  gradually 
formed,  and  Diderot  expressed  them  always  with  some  reserve 
and  accommodation.  In  general,  however,  it  may  be  remarked, 
that  in  the  progress  of  his  speculations  he  constantly  approached 
nearer  the  extreme  of  the  philosophical  direction  of  his  -age.  In 
his  earlier  writings  a  Deist,  he  afterwards  avowed  the  opinion 
that  every  thing  is  God.  At  first  defending  the  immateriality  and 
immortality  of  the  soul,  he  expressed  himself  at  a  later  period 
decidedly  against  these  doctrines,  affirming  that  the  species  alone 
has  an  abiding  being  while  the  individual  passes  away,  and  that 
immortality  is  nothing  other  than  to  live  in  the  -thoughts  of  coming 
generations.  But  Diderot  did  not  venture  to  the  real  extreme  of 
logical  materialism ;  his  moral  earnestness  restrained  him  from 
this. 

4.  The  last  word  of  materialism  was  spoken  with  reckless  au- 
dacity by  La  Meitrie  (1709 — 1751),  a  eotemporary  of  Diderot  : 
every  thing  spiritual  is  a  delusion,  and  physical  enjoyment  is  the 
highest  end  of  men.  Faith  in  the  existence  of  a  God,  says  La 
Mettrie,  is  just  as  groundless  as  it  is  fruitless.  The  world  will 
not  be  happy  till  atheism  becomes  universally  established.  Then 
alone  will  there  be  no  more  religious  strife,  then  alone  will  theo- 
logians, the  most  odious  of  combatants,  disappear,  and  nature, 
poisoned  at  present  by  their  influence,  will  come  again  to  its 
rights.  In  reference  to  the  human  soul,  there  can  be  no  philos- 
ophy but  materialism.  All  the  observation  and  experience  of  the 
greatest  philosophers  and  physicians  declare  this.  Soul  is  nothing 
but  a  mere  name,  which  has  a  rational  signification  only  when  we 
understand  by  it  that  part  of  our  body  which  thinks.  This  is 
the  brain,  which  has  its  muscles  of  thought,  just  as  the  limbs 
have  their  muscles  of  motion.  That  which  gives  man  his  advan- 
tage over  the  brutes  is,  first,  the  organization  of  his  brain,  ^nd 
eecond,  its  capacity  for  receiving  instruction.    Otherwise,  is  man 


208 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


a  brute  like  the  beasts  around  him,  though  in  many  respects  sur- 
passed by  these.  Immortality  is  an  absurdity.  The  soul  per- 
ishes with  the  body  of  which  it  forms  a  part.  With  death  every 
thing  is  over,  la  farce  est  jouee  I  The  practical  and  selfish  ap- 
plication of  all  this  is — let  us  enjoy  ourselves  as  long  as  we  exist, 
and  not  throw  away  any  satisfaction  we  can  attain. 

5.  The  SysUme  de  la  Nature  afterwards  attempted  to 
elaborate  with  greater  earnestness  and  scientific  precision,  that 
which  had  been  uttered  so  superficially  and  so  superciliously  by 
La  Mettrie,  viz.,  the  doctrine  that  matter  alone  exists,  while 
mind  is  nothing  other  than  matter  refined. 

The  Systime  de  la  Nature  appeared  in  London  under  a  ficti- 
tious name  in  1770.  It  was  then  published  as  a  posthumous 
work  of  Mirabaud,  late  secretary  of  the  Academy.  It  doubtless 
had  its  origin  in  the  circle  which  was  wont  to  assemble  with 
Baron  Holbach,  and  of  which  Diderot,  Grimm,  and  others  formed 
a  part.  Whether  the  Baron  Holbach  himself,  or  his  tutor  La- 
grange is  the  author  of  this  work,  or  whether  it  is  the  joint  pro- 
duction of  a  number,  cannot  now  be  determined.  The  Sy§- 
teme  de  la  Nature  is  hardly  a  French  book  :  the  style  is  too 
heavy  and  tedious. 

There  is,  in  fact,  nothing  but  matter  and  motion,  says  this 
work.  Both  are  inseparably  connected.  If  matter  is  at  rest,  it 
is  only  because  hindered  in  motion,  for  in  its  essence  it  is  not  a 
dead  mass.  Motion  is  twofold,  attraction  and  repulsion.  The 
different  motions  which  we  see  are  the  product  of  these  two,  and 
through  these  different  motions  arise  the  different  connections 
and  the  whole  manifoldne«s  of  things.  The  laws  which  direct  in 
all  this  are  eternal  and  unchangeable. — The  most  weighty  con- 
sequences of  such  a  doctrine  are  : 

(1.)  The  materiality  of  man.  Man  is  no  twofold  being  com- 
pounded of  mind  and  matter,  as  is  erroneously  believed.  If  the 
inquiry  is  closely  made  what  the  mind  is,  we  are  answered,  that 
the  most  accurate  philosophical  investigations  have  shown,  that 
the  principle  of  activity  in  man  is  a  substance  whose  peculiar  na- 
ture cannot  be  known,  but  of  which  we  can  affirm  that  it  is  in 


THE  FRENCH  CLEARING  UP. 


209 


divisible,  unextended,  invisible,  &c.  But  now,  who  should  con- 
ceive any  thing  determinate  in  a  substance  which  is  only  the 
negation  of  that  which  gives  knowledge,  an  idea  which  is  pecu- 
liarly only  the  absence  of  all  ideas  ?  Still  farther,  how  can  it  be 
explained  upon  such  a  hypothesis,  that  a  substance  which  itself  is 
not  material  can  work  upon  material  things ;  and  how  can  it  set 
these  in  motion,  since  there  is  no  point  of  contact  between  the 
two  ?  In  fact,  those  who  distinguish  their  soul  from  their  body, 
have  only  to  make  a  distinction  between  their  brain  and  their 
body.  Thought  is  only  a  modification  of  our  brain,  just  as  voli- 
tion is  another  modification  of  the  same  bodily  organ. 

(2.)  Another  chimera,  the  belief  in  the  being  of  a  God,  is 
connected  with  the  twofold  division  of  man  into  body  and  soul. 
This  belief  arises  like  the  hypothesis  of  a  soul-substance,  because 
mind  is  falsely  divided  from  matter,  and  nature  is  thus  made  two- 
fold. The  evil  which  men  experienced,  and  whose  natural  cause 
they  could  not  discover,  they  assigned  to  a  deity  which  they 
imagined  for  the  purpose.  The  first  notions  of  a  Grod  have  their 
source  therefore  in  sorrow,  fear,  and  uncertainty.  We  tremble 
because  our  forefathers  for  thousands  of  years  have  done  the 
same.  This  circumstance  awakens  no  auspicious  prepossession. 
But  not  only  the  rude,  but  also  the  theological  idea  of  God  is 
worthless,  for  it  explains  no  phenomenon  of  nature.  It  is,  more- 
over, full  of  absurdities,  for,  since  it  ascribes  moral  attributes  to 
God,  it  renders  him  human ;  while  on  the  other  hand,  by  a  mass 
of  negative  attributes,  it  seeks  to  distinguish  him  absolutely  from 
every  other  being.  The  true  system,  the  system  of  nature,  is 
hence  atheistic.  But  such  a  doctrine  requires  a  culture  and  a 
courage  which  neither  all  men  nor  most  men  possess.  If  we  un- 
derstand by  the  word  atheist  one  who  considers  only  dead  matter, 
or  who  designates  the  moving  power  in  nature  with  the  name 
God,  then  is  there  no  atheist,  or  whoever  would  be  one  is  a  fool. 
But  if  the  word  means  one  who  denies  the  existence  of  a  spiritual 
being,  a  being  whose  attributes  can  only  be  a  source  of  annoyance 
to  men,  then  are  there  indeed  atheists,  and  there  would  be  more 
of  them,  if  a  correct  knowledge  of  nature  and  a  sound  reason 


210 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


were  more  widely  diffused.  But  if  atheism  is  true,  then  should 
it  be  diffused.  There  are,  indeed,  many  who  have  cast  off  the 
yoke  of  religion,  who  nevertheless  think  it  is  necessary  for  the 
common  people  in  order  to  keep  them  within  proper  limits.  But 
this  is  just  as  if  we  should  determine  to  give  a  man  poison  lest 
he  should  abuse  his  strength.  Every  kind  of  Deism  leads  neces- 
sarily to  superstition,  since  it  is  not  possible  to  continue  on  the 
stand-point  of  pure  deism. 

(3.)  With  such  premises  the  freedom  and  immortality  of  the 
soul  both  disappear.  Man,  like  every  other  substance  in  nature, 
is  a  link  in  the  chain  of  necessary  connection,  a  blind  instrument 
in  the  hands  of  necessity.  If  any  thing  should  be  endowed  with 
self-motion,  that  is,  with  a  capacity  to  produce  motion  without  any 
other  cause,  then  would  it  have  the  power  to  destroy  motion  in 
the  universe ;  but  this  is  contrary  to  the  conception  of  the  uni- 
verse, which  is  only  an  endless  series  of  necessary  motions  spread- 
ing out  into  wider  circles  continually.  The  claim  of  an  individual 
immortality  is  absurd.  For  to  affirm  that  the  soul  exists  after 
the  destruction  of  the  body,  is  to  affirm  that  a  modification  of  a 
substance  can  exist  after  the  substance  itself  has  disappeared. 
There  is  no  other  immortality  than  to  live  in  the  remembrance  of 
posterity. 

(4.)  The  practical  consequences  of  these  principles  are  in  the 
highest  degree  favorable  for  the  system  of  nature,  the  utility  of 
any  doctrine  being  ever  the  first  criterion  of  its  truth.  While  the 
ideas  of  theologians  are  productive  only  of  disquiet  and  anxiety 
to  man,  the  system  of  nature  frees  him  from  all  such  unrest, 
teaches  him  to  enjoy  the  present  moment,  and  to  quietly  yield  to 
his  destiny,  while  it  gives  him  that  kind  of  apathy  which  every 
one  must  regard  as  a  blessing.  If  morality  would  be  active,  it 
can  rest  only  upon  self-love  and  self-interest ;  it  must  show  man 
whither  his  well-considered  interest  would  lead  him.  He  is  a 
good  man  who  gains  his  own  interest  in  such  a  way  that  others 
will  find  it  for  their  interest  to  assist  him.  The  system  of  self- 
interest,  therefore,  demands  the  union  of  men  among  each  other 
and  henx3e  we  have  true  morality. 


LEIBNITZ. 


211 


The  logical  dogmatic  materialism  of  the  SysUme  de  la  Nature 
IS  the  farthest  limit  of  an  empirical  direction  in  philosophy,  and 
consequently  closes  that  course  of  the  development  of  a  one-sided 
realism  which  had  begun  with  Locke.  The  attempt  first  made  hy 
Locke  to  explain  and  derive  the  ideal  world  from  the  material, 
ended  in  materialism  with  the  total  reduction  of  every  thing  spir- 
itual to  the  material,  with  the  total  denial  of  the  spiritual.  We 
must  now,  before  proceeding  farther,  according  to  the  classifica- 
tion made  §  XXVIL,  consider  the  idealistic  course  of  development 
which  ran  parallel  with  the  systems  of  a  partial  realism.  At  the 
head  of  this  course  stands  Leibnitz. 


SECTION  XXXIII. 

LEIBNITZ. 

As  empiricism  sprang  from  the  striving  to  subject  the  intel- 
lectual to  the  material,  to  materialize  the  spiritual,  so  on  the  other 
hand,  idealism  had  its  source  in  the  effort  to  spiritualize  the 
material,  or  so  to  apprehend  the  conception  of  mind  that  matter 
could  be  subsumed  under  it.  To  the  empiric-sensualistic  direc- 
tion, mind  was  nothing  but  refined  matter,  while  to  the  idealistic 
direction  matter  was  only  degenerated  (vergrohert)  mind  ("  a  con- 
fused notion,"  as  Leibnitz  expresses  it).    The  former,  in  its 

I logical  development,  was  driven  to  the  principle  that  only  material 
things  exist,  the  latter  (as  with  Leibnitz  and  Berkeley)  comes  to 
the  opposite  principle,  that  there  are  only  souls  and  their  ideas. 
For  the  partial  realistic  stand-point,  material  things  were  the  truly 
substantial.  But  for  the  idealistic  stand-point,  the  substantial 
belongs  alone  to  the  intellectual  world,  to  the  Egos.  Mind,  to  the 
partial  realism,  was  essentially  void,  a  tabula  rasa,  its  whole  con- 
tent came  to  it  from  the  external  world.  But  a  partial  idealism 
sought  to  carry  out  the  principle  that  nothing  can  come  into  the 
mind  which  had  not  at  least  been  preformed  within  it,  that  all  its 


212 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


knowledge  is  furnished  it  by  itself.  According  to  the  former  view 
knowledge  was  a  passive  relation,  according  to  the  latter  was  it 
wholly  active.  While,  in  fine,  a  partial  realism  had  attempted  to 
explain  the  becoming  in  nature  for  the  most  part  through  real, 
i.  e.  through  mechanical  motives  {lliomme  machine  is  the  title  of 
one  of  la  Mettrie's  writings),  idealism  had  sought  an  explanation 
of  the  same  through  ideal  motives,  i.  e.  teleologically.  While  the 
former  had  made  its  prominent  inquiry  for  moving  causes,  and 
had,  indeed,  often  ridiculed  the  search  for  a  final  cause ;  it  is  final 
causes  toward  which  the  latter  directs  its  chief  aim.  The  media- 
tion between  mind  and  matter,  between  thought  and  being,  will 
now  be  sought  in  the  final  cause,  in  the  teleological  harmony  of 
all  things  {pre-estahlisJied  harmony).  The  stand-point  of  Leib- 
nitz may  thus  be  characterized  in  a  word. 

Gottfried  Wilhelm  Leibnitz  was  born  in  1646,  at  Leipsic, 
where  his  father  was  professor.  Having  chosen  the  law  as  his 
profession,  he  entered  the  university  in  1661,  and  in  1663  he 
defended  for  his  degree  of  doctor  in  philosophy,  his  dissertation 
de  jprincipio  individui,  a  theme  well  characteristic  of  the  direc- 
tion of  his  later  philosophizing.  He  afterwards  went  to  Jena, 
and  subsequently  to  Altdorf,  where  he  became  doctor  of  laws. 
At  Altdorf  he  was  offered  a  professorship  of  jurisprudence,  which 
he  refused.  The  rest  of  his  life  was  unsettled  and  desultory, 
spent  for  the  most  part  in  courts,  where,  as  a  versatile  courtier,  he 
was  employed  in  the  most  varied  duties  of  diplomacy.  In  the 
year  1672  he  went  to  Paris,  in  order  to  induce  Louis  XIY.  to 
undertake  the  conquest  of  Egypt.  He  subsequently  visited  Lon- 
don, whence  he  was  afterwards  called  to  Hanover,  as  councillor 
of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick.  He  received  later  a  post  as  librarian 
at  Wolfenbuttel,  between  which  place  and  Hanover  he  spent  the 
most  of  his  subsequent  life,  though  interrupted  with  numerous 
journeys  to  Vienna,  Berlin,  etc.  He  was  intimately  associated 
with  the  Prussian  Electress,  Maria  Charlotte,  a  highly  talented 
woman,  who  surrounded  herself  with  a  circle  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished scholars  of  the  time,  and  for  whom  Liebnitz  wrote,  at 
her  own  request,  his  Theodicee.  In  1701,  after  Prussia  had  be- 


LEIBNITZ.  213 

come  a  kingdom,  an  academy  was  established  at  Berlin,  through 
his  efforts,  and  he  became  its  first  president.  Similar,  but  fruit- 
less attempts  were  made  by  him  to  establish  academies  in  Dres- 
den and  Vienna.  In  1711  the  title  of  imperial  court  councillor, 
and  a  baronage,  was  bestowed  upon  him  by  the  emperor  Charles  VI. 
Soon  after,  he  betook  himself  to  Vienna,  where  he  remained  a 
considerable  period,  and  wrote  his  Monadology,  at  the  solicitation 
of  Prince  Eugene.  He  died  in  1716.  Next  to  Aristotle,  Leib- 
nitz was  the  most  highly  gifted  scholar  that  had  ever  lived ;  with 
the  richest  and  most  extensive  learning,  he  united  the  highest  and 
most  penetrating  powers  of  mind.  Germany  has  reason  to  be 
proud  of  him,  since,  after  Jacob  Boehme,  he  is  the  first  philoso- 
pher of  any  note  among  the  Germans.  With  him  philosophy 
found  a  home  in  Germany.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  great 
variety  of  his  efi"orts  and  literary  undertakings,  together  with  his 
roving  manner  of  life,  prevented  him  from  giving  any  connected 
exhibition  of  his  philosophy.  His  views  are  for  the  most  part 
developed  only  in  brief  and  occasional  writings  and  letters,  com- 
posed frequently  in  the  French  language.  It  is  hence  not  easy 
to  state  his  philosophy  in  its  internal  connection,  though  none  of 
his  views  are  isolated,  but  all  stand  strictly  connected  with  each 
other.    The  following  are  the  chief  points  : 

1.  The  Doctrine  of  Monads. — The  fundamental  peculiarity 
of  Leibnitz's  theory  is  its  opposition  to  Spinozism.  Substance, 
as  the  indeterminate  universal,  was  with  Spinoza  the  only  positive. 
With  Leibnitz  also  the  conception  of  substance  lay  at  the  basis  of 
his  philosophy,  but  his  definition  of  it  was  entirely  different. 
While  Spinoza  had  sought  to  exclude  from  his  substance  every 
positive  determination,  and  especially  all  acting,  and  had  appre- 
hended it  simply  as  pure  being,  Leibnitz  viewed  it  as  living 
activity  and  a*ctive  energy,  an  example  for  which  might  be  found 
in  a  stretched  bow,  which  moved  and  straightened  itself  through 
its  own  energy  as  soon  as  the  external  hindrance  was  removed. 
That  this  active  energy  forms  the  essence  of  substance  is  a  prin- 
ciple to  which  Leibnitz  ever  returns,  and  from  which,  in  fact,  all 
the  other  chief  points  in^  his  philosophy  may  be  derived.  From 


214 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


this  there  follow  at  the  outset  two  determinations  of  suhstance 
directly  opposed  to  Spinozism ;  first,  that  it  is  a  single  being,  a 
monad ;  and  second,  that  there  are  a  multiplicity  of  monads. 
The  first  follows  because  substance,  in  so  far  as  it  exercises  an 
activity  similar  to  an  elastic  body,  is  essentially  an  excluding 
activity,  or  repulsion ;  the  conception  of  an  individual  or  a  monad 
being  that  which  excludes  another  from  itself  The  second  fol- 
lows because  the  existence  of  one  monad  involves  the  existence  of 
many.  The  conception  of  one  individual  postulates  other  indi- 
viduals, which  stand  over  against  the  one  as  excluded  from  it. 
Hence  the  fundamental  thesis  of  the  Leibnitz  philosophy  in  oppo- 
sition to  Spinozism  is  this,  viz.,  there  is  a  multiplicity  of  individ- 
ual substances  or  monads. 

2.  The  Monads  more  Accurately  Determined. — The  monads 
of  Leibnitz  are  similar  to  atoms  in  their  general  features.  Like 
these  they  are  corpuscular  units,  independent  of  any  external  in- 
fluence, and  indestructible  by  any  external  power.  But  notwith- 
standing this  similarity,  there  is  an  important  and  characteristic 
difi"erence  between  the  two.  First,  the  atoms  are  not  distinguished 
from  each  other,  they  are  all  qualitatively  alike ;  but  each  one  of 
the  monads  is  different  in  quality  from  every  other,  every  one  is  a 
peculiar  world  for  itself,  every  one  is  different  from  every  other. 
According  to  Leibnitz,  there  are  no  two  things  in  the  world  which 
are  exactly  alike.  Secondly,  atoms  can  be  considered  as  extended 
and  divisible,  but  the  monads  are  metaphysical  points,  and  actu- 
ally indivisible.  Here,  lest  we  should  stumble  at  this  proposition 
(for  an  aggregate  of  unextended  monads  can  never  give  an  ex- 
tended world),  we  must  take  into  consideration  Leibnitz's  view  of 
space,  which,  according  to  him,  is  not  something  real,  but  only 
confused,  subjective  representation.  Thirdly,  the  monad  is  a 
representatiye  being.  "With  the  atomists  such  a  determination 
would  amount  to  nothing,  but  with  Leibnitz  it  has  a  very  impor- 
tant part  to  play.  According  to  him,  in  every  monad,  every  other 
is  reflected ;  every  monad  is  a  living  mirror  of  the  universe,  and 
ideally  contains  the  whole  within  itself  as  in  a  germ.  In  thus 
mirroring  the  world,  however,  the  monad  is  not  passive  but  spon- 


LEIBNITZ. 


215 


taneously  self-active :  it  does  not  receive  the  images  which  it 
mirrors,  but  produces  them  spontaneously  itself,  as  the  soul  does  a 
dream.  In  every  monad,  therefore,  the  all-seeiDg  and  all-know- 
ing one  might  read  every  thing,  even  the  future,  since  this  is  po- 
tentially contained  in  the  present.  Every  monad  is  a  kind  of 
God.    {Parvus  in  suo  genere  Deus.) 

3.  The  Pre-established  Harmony. — The  universe  is  thus 
the  sum  of  all  the  monads.  Every  thing,  every  composite,  is  an 
aggregate  of  monads.  Thus  every  bodily  organism  is  not  one 
substance,  but  many,  it  is  a  multiplicity  of  monads,  like  a  machine 
which  is  made  up  of  a  number  of  distinct  pieces  of  mechanism. 
Leibnitz  compared  bodies  to  a  fish-pond,  which  might  be  full  of 
living  elements,  though  dead  itself  The  ordinary  view  of  things 
is  thus  wholly  set  aside ;  the  truly  substantial  does  not  belong 
to  bodies,  i.  e.  to  the  aggregates,  but  to  their  original  elements. 
Matter  in  the  vulgar  sense,  as  something  conceived  to  be  without 
mind,  does  not  at  all  exist.  How  now  must  the  inner  connection 
of  the  universe  be  conceived?  In  the  following  way.  Every 
monad  is  a  representative  being,  and  at  the  same  time,  each  one 
is  different  from  every  other.  This  difference,  therefore,  depends 
alone  upon  the  difference  of  representation :  there  are  just  as 
many  different  degrees  of  representation  as  there  are  monads,  and 
these  degrees  may  be  fixed  according  to  some  of  their  prominent 
stages.  The  representations  may  be  classified  according  to  the 
distinction  between  confused  and  distinct  knowledge.  Hence  a 
monad  of  the  lowest  rank  (a  monad  tcute  nue)  will  be  one  which 
simply  represents,  i.  e.  which  stands  on  the  stage  of  most  confused 
knowledge.  Leibnitz  compares  this  state  with  a  swoon,  or  with 
our  condition  in  a  dreamy  sleep,  in  which  we  are  not  without  rep- 
resentations, (notions) — for  otherwise  we  could  have  none  when 
awaking — but  in  which  the  representations  are  so  numerous  that 
they  neutralize  each  other  and  do  not  come  into  the  consciousness. 
This  is  the  stage  of  inorganic  nature.  In  a  higher  rank  are  those 
monads  in  which  the  representation  is  active  as  a  formative  vital 
force,  though  still  without  consciousness.  This  is  the  stage  of  the 
v^egetable  world.    Still  higher  ascends  the  life  of  the  monad  when 


216 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


it  attains  to  sensation  and  memory,  as  is  the  case  in  the  animal 
kingdom.  The  lower  monads  may  be  said  to  sleep,  and  the  brute 
monads  to  dream.  When  still  farther  the  soul  rises  to  reason  or 
reflection,  we  call  it  mind,  spirit. — The  distinction  of  the  monads 
from  each  other  is,  therefore,  this,  that  each  one,  though  mirroring 
the  whole  and  the  same  universe  in  itself,  does  it  from  a  different 
point  of  view,  and,  therefore,  differently,  the  one  more,  and  the 
rest  less  perfectly.  Each  one  is  a  different  centre  of  the  world 
which  it  mirrors.  Each  one  contains  the  whole  universe,  the 
whole  infinity  within  itself,  and  in  this  respect  is  like  God,  the 
only  difference  being  that  God  knows  every  thing  with  perfect 
distinctness,  while  the  monad  represents  it  confu£?edly,  though  one 
monad  may  represent  it  more  confusedly  than  another.  The 
limitation  of  a  monad  does  not,  therefore,  consist  in  its  containing 
less  than  another  or  than  God,  but  only  in  its  containing  more 
imperfectly  or  in  its  representing  less  distinctly. — Upon  this  stand- 
point the  universe,  in  so  far  as  every  monad  mirrors  one  and  the 
same  universe,  though  each  in  a  different  way,  represents  a  drama 
of  the  greatest  possible  difference,  as  well  as  of  the  greatest  pos- 
sible unity  and  order,  i.  e.  of  the  greatest  possible  perfection,  or 
the  ahsolute  harmony.  For  distinction  in  unity  is  harmony. — 
But  in  still  another  respect  the  universe  is  a  system  of  harmony. 
Since  the  monads  do  not  work  upon  each  other,  but  each  one  fol- 
lows only  the  law  of  its  own  being,  there  is  danger  lest  the  inner 
harmony  of  the  universe  may  be  disturbed.  How  is  this  danger 
removed  ?  Thus,  viz.,  every  monad  mirrors  the  whole  and  the 
same  universe.  The  changes  of  the  collected  monads,  therefore, 
run  parallel  with  each  other,  and  in  this  consists  the  harmony  of 
all  as  pre-established  by  God. 

4.  The  Relation  of  the  Deity  to  the  Monads. — What  part 
does  the  conception  of  God  play  in  the  system  of  Leibnitz  ?  An 
almost  idle  one.  Following  the  strict  consequences  of  his  system, 
Leibnitz  should  have  held  to  no  proper  theism,  but  the  harmony 
of  the  universe  should  have  taken  the  place  of  the  Deity.  Ordi- 
narily he  considers  God  as  the  sufficient  cause  of  all  monads. 
But  he  was  also  accustomed  to  consider  the  final  cause  of  a  thing 


LEIBNITZ. 


217 


as  its  sufficient  cause.  In  this  respect,  therefore,  he  almost  iden- 
tifies God  and  the  absolute  final  cause.  Elsewhere  he  considers 
the  Deity  as  a  simple  primitive  substance,  or  as  the  individual 
primitive  unity.  Again,  he  speaks  of  God  as  a  pure  immaterial 
actuality,  actus  purus^  while  to  the  monads  belongs  matter,  i.  e, 
restrained  actuality,  striving,  appetitio.  Once  he  calls  him  a 
mona.d,  though  this  is  in  manifest  contradiction  with  the  deter- 
minations otherwise  assigned  him.  It  was  for  Leibnitz  a  very 
difficult  problem  to  bring  his  monadology  and  iis  theism  into  har- 
mony with  each  other,  without  giving  up  the  premises  of  both. 
If  he  held  fast  to  the  substantiality  of  the  monads,  he  was  in  dan- 
ger of  making  them  independent  of  the  Deity,  and  if  he  did  not, 
he  could  hardly  escape  falling  back  into  Spinozism. 

5.  The  Relation  of  Soul  and  Body  is  clearly  explained  on 
the  standpoint  of  the  pre-established  harmony.  This  relation,  tak- 
ing the  premises  of  the  monadology,  might  seem  enigmatical.  If 
no  monad  can  work  upon  any  other,  how  can  the  soul  work  upon 
the  body  to  lead  and  move  it  ?  The  enigma  is  solved  by  the  pre- 
established  harmony.  While  the  body  and  soul,  each  one  inde- 
pendently of  the  other,  follows  the  laws  of  its  being,  the  body 
working  mechanically,  and  the  soul  pursuing  ends,  yet  God  has 
established  such  a  concordant  harmony  of  the  two  activities,  such 
a  parallelism  of  the  two  functions,  that  there  is  in  fact  a  perfect 
unity  for  body  and  soul.  There  are,  says  Leibnitz,  three  views 
respecting  the  relation  of  body  and  soul.  The  first  and  most 
common  supposes  a  reciprocal  influence  between  the  two,  but  such 
a  view  is  untenable,  because  there  can  be  no  interchange  between 
mind  and  matter.  The  second  and  occasional  one  {cf.  ^  XX Y.  1), 
brings  about  this  interchange  through  the  constant  assistance  of 
God,  which  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  to  make  God  a  Deus  ex 
machina.  Hence  the  only  solution  for  the  problem  is  the  hypothe- 
sis of  a  pre-established  harmony.  Leibnitz  illustrates  these  three 
views  in  the  following  example.  Let  one  conceive  of  two  watches, 
whose  hands  ever  accurately  point  to  the  same  time.  This 
agreement  may  be  explained,  first  (the  common  view),  by  sup- 
posing an  actual  connection  between  the  hands  of  each,  so  that 
10 


218 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


the  hand  of  the  one  watch  might  draw  the  hand  of  the  other  after 
it,  or  second  (the  occasional  view),  by  conceiving  of  a  watch- 
maker who  continually  keeps  the  hands  alike,  or  in  fine  (the  pre- 
established  harmony),  by  ascribing  to  each  a  mechanism  so  ex- 
quisitely wrought  that  each  one  goes  in  perfect  independence  of 
the  other,  and  at  the  same  time  in  entire  agreement  with  it. — That 
the  soul  is  immortal  (indestructible),  follows  at  once  from  the 
doctrine  of  monads.  There  is  no  proper  death.  That  which  is 
called  death  is  only  the  soul  losing  a  part  of  the  monads  which 
compose  the  mechanism  of  its  body,  while  the  living  element  goes 
back  to  a  condition  similar  to  that  in  which  it  was  before  it  came 
upon  the  theatre  of  the  world. 

6.  The  monadology  has  very  important  consequences  in  refer- 
ence to  THE  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE.  As  the  philosophy  of  Leibuitz, 
by  its  opposition  to  Spinozism,  had  to  do  with  the  doctrine  of  be- 
ing, so  by  its  opposition  to  the  empiricism  of  Locke  must  it  expound 
the  theory  of  knowledge.  Locke's  Essay  on  the  Human  Under- 
standing had  attracted  Leibnitz  without  satisfying  him,  and  he 
therefore  attempted  a  new  investigation  in  his  Nouveaux  Essais, 
in  which  he  defended  the  doctrine  of  innate  ideas.  But  this 
hypothesis  of  innate  ideas  Leibnitz  now  freed  from  that  defective 
view  which  had  justified  the  objections  of  Locke.  The  innateness 
of  the  ideas  must  not  be  held  as  though  they  were  explicitly  and 
consciously  contained  in  the  mind,  but  rather  the  mind  possesses 
them  potentially  and  only  virtually,  though  with  the  capacity  to 
produce  them  out  of  itself.  All  thoughts  are  properly  innate,  i.  e. 
they  do  not  come  into  the  mind  from  without,  but  are  rather  pro- 
duced by  it  from  itself.  Any  external  influence  upon  the  mind  is 
inconceivable,  it  even  needs  nothing  external  for  its  sensations. 
While  Locke  had  compared  the  mind  to  an  unwritten  piece  of 
paper,  Leibnitz  likened  it  to  a  block  of  marble,  in  which  the  veins 
prefigure  the  form  of  the  statue.  Hence  the  common  antithesis 
between  rational  and  empirical  knowledge  disappears  with  Leib- 
nitz in  the  degrees  of  greater  or  less  distinctness. — Among  these 
theoretically  innate  ideas,  Leibnitz  recognizes  two  of  special 
prominence,  which  take  the  first  rank  as  principles  of  all  knowl- 


LEIBNITZ. 


219 


edge  and  all  ratiocination, — the  principle  of  contradiction  (prin- 
cipium  contradictionis),  and  the  principle  of  sufficient  cause 
(principiiim  rationis  sufficientis).  To  these,  as  a  principle  of 
the  second  rank,  must  be  added  the  principium  indiscernibilium, 
or  the  principle  that  there  are  in  nature  no  two  things  wholly 
alike. 

7.  The  most  elaborate  exhibition  of  Leibnitz's  theological 
views  is  given  in  his  Theodicee.  The  Theodicee,  is,  however,  his 
weakest  work,  and  has  but  a  loose  connection  with  the  rest  of  his 
philosophy.  Written  at  the  instigation  of  a  woman,  it  belies  this 
origin  neither  in  its  form  nor  in  its  content — not  in  its  form,  for 
in  its  effort  to  be  popular  it  becomes  diffuse  and  unscientific,  and 
not  in  its  content,  for  it  accommodates  itself  to  the  positive 
dogmas  and  the  premises  of  theology  farther  than  the  scientific 
basis  of  the  system  of  Leibnitz  would  permit.  In  this  work, 
Leibnitz  investigates  the  relation  of  God  to  the  world  in  order  to 
show  a  conformity  in  this  relation  to  a  final  cause,  and  to  free  God 
from  the  charge  of  acting  without  or  contrary  to  an  aim.  Why 
is  the  world  as  it  is  ?  God  might  have  created  it  very  differently. 
True,  answers  Leibnitz,  God  saw  an  infinite  number  of  worlds  as 
possible  before  him,  but  out  of  all  these  he  chose  the  one  which 
actually  is  as  the  best.  This  is  the  famous  doctrine  of  the  best 
world,  according  to  which  no  more  perfect  world  is  possible  than 
the  one  which  is. — But  how  so  ?  Is  not  the  existence  of  evil  at 
variance  with  this  ?  Leibnitz  answers  this  objection  by  distinguish- 
ing three  kinds  of  evil,  the  metaphysical,  the  physical,  and  the 
moral.  The  metaphysical  evil,  i.  e.  the  finiteness  and  incomplete- 
ness of  things,  is  necessary  because  inseparable  from  finite  existence, 
and  is  thus  independent  of  the  will  of  God.  Physical  evil  (pain, 
&c.),  though  not  independent  of  the  will  of  God,  is  often  a  good  con- 
ditionally, i.  e.  as  a  punishment  or  means  of  improvement.  Moral 
evil  or  wickedness  can  in  no  way  be  charged  to  the  will  of  God. 
Leibnitz  took  various  ways  to  account  for  its  existence,  and  obviate 
the  contradiction  lying  between  it  and  the  conception  of  God.  At 
one  time  he  says  that  wickedness  is  only  permitted  by  God  as  a 
conditio  sine  qua  non,  because  without  wickedness  there  were  no 


220 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


freedom,  and  without  freedom  no  virtue.  Again,  he  reduces  the 
moral  evil  to  the  metaphysical,  and  makes  wickedness  nothing  but 
a  want  of  perfection,  a  negation,  a  limitation,  playing  the  same 
part  as  do  the  shadows  in  a  painted  picture,  or  the  discords  in  a 
piece  of  music,  which  do  not  diminish  the  heauty,  hut  only  in- 
crease it  through  contrast.  Again,  he  distinguishes  between  the 
material  and  the  formal  element  in  a  wicked  act.  The  material 
of  sin,  the  power  to  act,  is  from  God,  but  the  formal  element,  the 
wickedness  of  the  act,  belongs  wholly  to  man,  and  is  the  result 
of  his  limitation,  or,  as  Leibnitz  here  and  there  expresses  it,  of  his 
eternal  self-predestination.  In  no  case  can  the  harmony  of  the 
universe  be  destroyed  through  such  a  cause. 

These  are  the  chief  points  of  Leibnitz's  philosophy.  The 
general  characteristic  of  it  as  given  in  the  beginning  of  the  pres- 
ent section,  will  be  found  to  have  its  sanction  in  the  specific  exhi- 
bition that  has  now  been  furnished. 


SECTION  XXXIV. 

BERKELEY. 

Leibnitz  had  not  carried  out  the  standpoint  of  idealism  to  its 
extreme.  He  had  indeed,  on  the  one  side,  explained  space  and 
motion  and  bodily  things  as  phenomena  which  had  their  existence 
only  in  a  confused  representation,  but  on  the  other  side,  he  had 
not  wholly  denied  the  existence  of  the  bodily  world,  but  had  rec- 
ognized as  a  reality  lying  at  its  basis,  the  world  of  monads.  The 
phenomenal  or  bodily  world  had  its  fixed  and  substantial  founda- 
tion in  the  monads.  Thus  Leibnitz,  though  an  idealist,  did  not 
wholly  break  with  realism.  The  ultimate  consequence  of  a  sub- 
jective idealism  would  have  been  to  wholly  deny  the  reality  of 
the  objective,  sensible  world,  and  explain  corporeal  objects  as 
simply  phenomena,  as  nothing  but  subjective  notions  without  any 
objective  reality  as  a  basis.    This  consequence  the  idealistic 


BERKELEY. 


221 


counterpart  to  the  ultimate  realistic  result  of  materialism — ap- 
pears in  George  Berkeleij^  who  was  born  in  Ireland,  1684,  made 
bishop  of  the  Anglican  Church  in  1734,  and  died  in  1753.  Hence, 
though  he  followed  the  empiricism  of  Locke,  and  sustained  no 
outward  connection  with  Leibnitz,  we  must  place  him  in  immediate 
succession  to  the  latter  as  the  perfecter  of  a  subjective  idealism. 

Our  sensations,  says  Berkeley,  are  entirely  subjective.  We 
are  wholly  in  error  if  we  believe  that  we  have  a  sensation  of  ex- 
ternal objects  or  perceive  them  That  which  we  have  and  per- 
ceive is  only  our  sensations.  It  is  e.  g.  clear,  that  by  the  sense  of 
sight  we  can  see  neither  the  distance,  the  size,  nor  the  form  of 
objects,  but  that  we  only  conclude  that  these  exist,  because  our 
experience  has  taught  us  that  a  certain  sensation  of  sight  is  al- 
ways attended  by  certain  sensations  of  touch.  That  which  we 
see  is  only  colors,  clearness,  obscurity,  &c.,  and  it  is  therefore 
false  to  say  that  we  see  and  feel  the  same  thing.  So  also  we 
never  go  out  of  ourselves  for  those  sensations  to  which  we  ascribe 
most  decidedly  an  objective  character.  The  peculiar  objects  of 
our  understanding  are  only  our  own  affections ;  all  ideas  are  hence 
only  our  own  sensations.  But  just  as  there  can  be  no  sensations 
outside  of  the  sensitive  subject,  so  no  idea  can  have  existence  out- 
side of  him  who  possesses  it.  The  so-called  objects  exist  only  in 
our  notion,  and  have  a  being  only  as  they  are  perceived.  It  is 
the  great  error  of  most  philosophers  that  they  ascribe  to  corporeal 
objects  a  being  outside  the  conceiving  mind,  and  do  not  see  that 
they  are  only  mental.  It  is  not  possible  that  material  things 
should  produce  any  thing  so  wholly  distinct  from  themselves  as 
sensations  and  notions.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  material  ex- 
ternal world ;  mind  alone  exists  as  thinking  being,  whose  nature 
consists  in  thinking  and  willing.  But  whence  then  arise  all  our 
sensations  which  come  to  us  like  the  images  of  fancy,  without  our 
agency,  and  which  are  thus  no  products  of  our  will  ?  They  arise 
from  a  spirit  superior  to  ourselves — for  only  a  spirit  can  produce 
within  us  notions — even  from  Grod.  God  gives  us  ideas :  but  as 
it  would  be  contradictory  to  assert  that  a  being  could  give  what 
it  does  not  possess,  so  ideas  exist  in  God^  and  we  derive  them 


222 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


from  him.  These  ideas  in  God  may  be  called  archetypes,  and 
those  in  us  ectypes. — In  consequence  of  this  view,  says  Berkeley, 
we  do  not  deny  an  independent  reality  of  things,  we  only  deny 
that  they  can  exist  elsewhere  than  in  an  understanding.  Instead 
therefore  of  speaking  of  a  nature  in  which,  e.  g.  the  sun  is  the 
cause  of  warmth,  &c.,  the  accurate  expression  would  be  this :  God 
announces  to  us  through  the  sense  of  sight  that  we  should  soon 
perceive  a  sensation  of  warmth.  Hence  by  nature  we  are  only  to 
understand  the  succession  or  the  connection  of  ideas,  and  by 
natural  laws  the  constant  order  in  which  they  proceed,  i.  e.  the 
laws  of  the  association  of  ideas.  This  thorough-going  subjective 
idealism,  this  complete  denial  of  matter,  Berkeley  considered  as 
the  surest  way  to  oppose  materialism  and  atheism. 


SECTION  XXXV. 

WOLFF. 

The  idealism  of  Berkeley,  as  was  to  be  expected  from  the 
nature  of  the  case,  remained  without  any  farther  development, 
but  the  philosophy  of  Leibnitz  was  taken  up  and  subjected  to  a 
farther  revision  by  Christian  Wolff.  He  was  born  in  Breslau  in 
1679.  He  was  chosen  professor  at  Halle,  where  he  became  ob- 
noxious to  the  charge  of  teaching  a  doctrine  at  variance  with  the 
Scriptures,  and  drew  upon  himself  such  a  violent  opposition  from 
the  theologians  of  the  university,  that  a  cabinet  order  was  issued 
for  his  dismissal  on  the  8th  of  November,  1723,  and  he  was  en- 
joined to  leave  Prussia  within  forty-eight  hours  on  pain  of  being 
hung.  He  then  became  professor  in  Marburg,  but  was  after- 
wards recalled  to  Prussia  by  Frederic  II.  immediately  upon  his 
accession  to  the  throne.  He  was  subsequently  made  baron,  and 
died  1754.  In  his  chief  thoughts  he  followed  Leibnitz,  a  con- 
nection which  he  himself  admitted,  though  he  protested  against 
the  identification  of  his  philosophy  with  that  of  Leibnitz,  and  ob- 


WOLFF. 


223 


jected  to  the  name,  PhilosopJiia  Leibnitio-Wolffiana,  which  was 
taken  by  his  disciple  Bilfinger.  The  historical  merit  of  Wolff  is 
threefold.  First,  and  most  important,  he  laid  claim  again  to  the 
whole  domain  of  knowledge  in  the  name  of  philosophy,  and 
sought  again  to  build  up  a  systematic  framework,  and  make  an 
encyclopedia  of  philosophy  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word. 
Though  he  did  not  himself  furnish  much  new  material  for  this 
purpose,  yet  he  carefully  elaborated  and  arranged  that  which  he 
found  at  hand.  Secondly,  he  made  again  the  philosophical  method 
as  such,  an  object  of  attention.  His  own  method  is,  indeed,  an 
external  one  as  to  its  content,  namely,  the  mathematical  or  the 
mathematico-syllogistical,  recommended  by  Leibnitz,  and  by  the 
application  of  this  his  whole  philosophizing  sinks  to  a  level  for- 
malism. (For  instance,  in  his  principles  of  architecture,  the 
eighth  proposition  is — "  a  window  must  be  wide  enough  for  two 
persons  to  recline  together  conveniently," — a  proposition  which  is 
thus  proved  :  "  we  are  more  frequently  accustomed  to  recline  and 
look  out  at  a  window  in  company  with  another  person  than  alone, 
and  hence,  since  the  builder  of  the  house  should  satisfy  the  owner 
in  every  respect  1),  he  must  make  a  window  wide  enough  for 
two  persons  conveniently  to  recline  within  it  at  the  same  time  ". 
Still  this  formalism  is  not  without  its  advantage,  for  it  subjects 
the  philosophical  content  to  a  logical  treatment.  Thirdly,  Wolff 
has  taught  philosophy  to  speak  German,  an  art  which  it  has  not 
since  forgotten.  Next  to  Leibnitz,  he  is  entitled  to  the  merit  of 
having  made  the  German  language  for  ever  the  organ  of  philos- 
ophy. 

The  following  remarks  will  suffice  for  the  content  and  the 
scientific  classification  of  Wolff's  philosophy.  He  defines  philos- 
ophy to  be  the  science  of  the  possible  as  such.  But  that  is  pos- 
sible which  contains  no  contradiction.  Wolff  defends  this  de- 
finition against  the  charge  of  presuming  too  much.  It  is  not 
affirmed,  he  says,  with  this  definition  that  either  he  or  any  other 
philosopher  knows  every  thing  which  is  possible.  The  definition 
only  claims  for  philosophy  the  whole  province  of  human  knowl- 
edge, and  it  is  certainly  proper  that  philosophy  should  be  de- 


224 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


scribed  according  to  the  higliest  perfection  -wliich  it  can  attain, 
even  though  it  has  not  yet  actually  reached  it. — In  what  parts 
now  does  this  science  of  the  possible  consist  ?  Reding  on  the 
perception  that  there  are  within  the  soul  two  faculties,  one  of 
knowing  and  one  of  willing,  "Wolff  divides  philosophy  into  •  two 
great  parts,  theoretical  philosophy  (an  expression,  however,  which 
first  appears  among  his  followers),  or  metaphysics,  and  practical 
philosophy.  Logic  precedes  both  as  a  preliminary  training  for 
philosophical  study.  Metaphysics  are  still  farther  divided  by 
Wolff  into  ontology,  cosmology,  psychology,  and  natural  the- 
ology ;  practical  philosophy  he  divides  into  ethics,  whose  object 
is  man  as  man ;  economics,  whose  object  is  man  as  a  member  of 
the  family ;  and  politics,  whose  object  is  man  as  a  citizen  of  the 
state. 

1.  Ontology  is  the  first  part  of  Wolff's  metaphysics.  Ontol- 
ogy treats  of  what  are  now  called  categories,  or  those  fundamental 
conceptions  which  are  applied  to  every  object,  and  must  therefore 
at  the  outset  be  investigated.  Aristotle  had  already  furnished  a 
table  of  categories,  but  he  had  derived  them  wholly  empirically. 
It  is  not  much  better  with  the  ontology  of  Wolff ;  it  is  laid  out 
like  a  philosophical  dictionary.  At  its  head  he  places  the  prin- 
ciple of  contradiction,  viz.  :  it  is  not  possible  for  any  thing  to  be, 
and  at  the  same  time  not  to  be.  The  conception  of  the  possible 
at  once  follows  from  this  principle.  That  is  possible  which  con- 
tains no  contradiction.  That  is  necessary,  the  opposite  of  which 
contradicts  itself,  and  that  is  accidental,  the  opposite  of  which  is 
possible.  Every  thing  which  is  possible  is  a  thing,  though  only 
an  imaginary  one ;  that  which  neither  is,  nor  is  possible,  is  no- 
thing. When  many  things  together  compose  a  thing,  this  is  a 
whole,  and  the  individual  things  comprehended  by  it  are  its  parts. 
The  greatness  of  a  thing  consists  in  the  multitude  of  its  parts. 
If  A  contains  that  by  which  we  can  understand  the  being  of  B, 
then  that  in  A  by  which  B  becomes  understood  is  the  ground 
of  B,  and  the  whole  A  which  contains  the  ground  of  B  is  its 
cause.  That  which  contains  the  ground  of  its  properties  is  the 
essence  of  a  thing.    Space  is  the  arrangement  of  things  which 


WOLFF 


225 


exist  conjointly.  Place  is  the  determinate  way  in  which  a  thing 
exists  in  conjunction  with  others.  Movement  is  change  of  place. 
Time  is  the  arrangement  of  that  which  exists  successively,  etc. 

2.  Cosmology. — Wolff  defines  the  world  to  be  a  series  of  chans;- 
ing  objects,  which  exist  conjointly  and  successively,  but  which  are 
so  connected  together  that  one  ever  contains  the  ground  of  the 
other.  Things  are  connected  in  space  and  in  time.  By  virtue  of 
this  universal  connection,  the  world  is  one  united  whole;  the 
essence  of  the  world  consists  in  the  manner  of  its  connection. 
But  this  manner  cannot  be  changed.  It  can  neither  receive  any 
new  ingredients  nor  lose  any  of  those  it  possesses.  From  the 
essence  of  the  world  spring  all  its  changes.  In  this  respect  the 
world  is  a  machine.  Events  in  the  world  are  only  hypothetically 
necessary  in  so  far  as  previous  events  have  had  a  certain  character ; 
they  are  accidental  in  so  far  as  the  world  might  have  been  directed 
otherwise.  In  respect  to  the  question  whether  the  world  had  a 
beginning  in  time,  Wolff  does  not  express  himself  explicitly. 
Since  God  is  independent  of  time,  but  the  world  has  been  from 
eternity  in  time,  the  world  therefore  is  in  no  case  eternal  in  any 
sense  like  God.  But  according  to  Wolff,  neither  space  nor  time 
has  any  substantial  being.  Body  is  a  connected  thing  composed 
of  matter,  and  possessing  a  moving  power  within  itself.  The 
powers  of  a  body  taken  together  are  called  its  nature,  and  the 
comprehension  of  all  being  is  called  nature  in  general.  That 
which  has  its  ground  in  the  essence  of  the  world  is  called  natural, 
and  that  which  has  not,  is  supernatural,  or  a  wonder.  At  the 
close  of  his  cosmology,  Wolff  treats  of  the  perfection  and  imper- 
fection of  the  world.  The  perfection  of  a  world  consists  in  the 
harmony  with  each  other  of  every  thing  which  exists  conjointly 
and  successively.  But  since  every  thing  has  its  separate  rules, 
the  individual  must  give  up  so  much  from  its  perfection  as  is 
necessary  for  the  symmetry  of  the  whole. 

3.  Rational  Psychology. — The  soul  is  that  within  us  which 
is  self-conscious.  In  the  self-consciousness  of  the  soul  are  itself  and 
other  objects.  Consciousness  is  either  clear  or  indistinct.  Clear 
consciousness  is  thought.    The  soul  is  a  simple  incorporeal  sub- 

10* 


226 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


stance.  There  dwells  within  it  a  power  to  represent  to  itself  a 
world.  In  this  sense  brutes  also  may  have  a  soul,  but  a  soul 
which  possesses  understanding  and  will  is  mind,  and  mind  belongs 
alone  to  men.  The  soul  of  man  is  a  mind  joined  to  a  body,  and 
this  is  the  distinction  between  men  and  superior  spirits.  The 
movements  of  the  soul  and  of  the  body  harmonize  with  each  other 
by  virtue  of  the  preestablished  harmony  The  freedom  of  the 
human  soul  is  the  power  according  to  its  own  arbitrament,  to 
choose  of  two  possible  things  that  which  pleases  it  best.  But  the 
soul  does  not  decide  without  motives,  it  ever  chooses  that  which 
it  holds  to  be  the  best.  Thus  the  soul  would  seem  impelled  to  its 
action  by  its  representations,  but  the  understanding  is  not  con- 
strained to  its  representations  of  that  which  is  good  and  bad,  and 
hence  also  the  will  is  not  constrained,  but  free.  As  a  simple 
being  the  soul  is  indivisible,  and  hence  incorruptible ;  the  souls 
of  brutes,  however,  have  no  understanding,  and  hence  enjoy  no 
conscious  existence  after  death.  This  belongs  alone  to  the  human 
soul,  and  hence  the  human  soul  alone  is  immortal. 

4.  Natural  Theology. — Wolff  uses  here  the  cosmological 
argument  to  demonstrate  the  existence  of  a  God.  God  might 
have  made  different  worlds,  but  has  preferred  the  present  one  as 
the  best.  This  world  has  been  called  into  being  by  the  will  of 
God.  His  aim  in  its  creation  was  the  manifestation  of  his  own 
perfection.  Evil  in  the  world  does  not  spring  from  the  Divine 
will,  but  from  the  limited  being  of  human  things.  God  permits 
it  only  as  a  means  of  good. 

This  brief  aphoristic  exposition  of  Wolff's  metaphysics,  shows 
how  greatly  it  is  related  to  the  doctrine  of  Leibnitz.  The  latter, 
however,  loses  much  of  its  speculative  profoundness  by  the  abstract 
and  logical  treatment  it  receives  in  the  hands  of  Wolff.  For  the 
most  part,  the  specific  elements  of  the  monadology  remain  in  the 
background ;  with  Wolff,  his  simple  beings  are  not  representative 
like  the  Monads,  but  more  like  the  Atoms.  Hence  there  is  with 
him  much  that  is  illogical  and  contradictory.  His  peculiar  merit  in 
metaphysics  is  ontology,  which  he  has  elaborated  far  mere  strictly 
than  his  predecessors.   A  multitude  of  philosophical  terminations 


THE  GERMAN  CLEARING  UP. 


227 


owe  to  him  their  origin,  and  their  introduction  into  philosophical 
language. 

The  philosophy  of  Wolff,  comprehensible  and  distinct  as  it 
was,  and  by  its  composition  in  the  G-erman  language  more  acces- 
sible than  that  of  Leibnitz,  soon  became  the  popular  philosophy, 
and  gained  an  extensive  influence.  Among  the  names  which  de- 
serve credit  for  their  scientific  treatment  of  it,  we  may  mention 
ThiLmming,  1697-1728;  Bilfinger;  1693-1750;  Baumeister, 
1708-1785;  Baumgarten  the  esthetic,  1714-1762;  and  his 
scholar  Meier,  1718-1777. 


SECTION  XXXVI. 

THE  GERMAN  CLEARING  UP. 

Under  the  influence  of  the  philosophy  of  Leibnitz  and  Wolff, 
though  without  any  immediate  connection  with  it,  there  arose  in 
Germany  during  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  an 
eclectic  popular  philosophy,  whose  different  phases  may  be  em- 
braced under  the  name  of  the  German  clearing  up.  It  has 
but  little  significance  for  the  history  of  philosophy,  though  not 
without  importance  in  other  respects.  Its  great  aim  was  to  secure 
a  higher  culture,  and  hence  a  cultivated  and  polished  style  of 
reasoning  is  the  form  in  which  it  philosophized.  It  is  the  German 
counterpart  of  the  French  clearing  up.  As  the  latter  closed 
the  realistic  period  of  development  by  drawing  the  ultimate  con- 
sequence of  materialism,  so  the  former  closed  the  idealistic  series 
by  its  tendency  to  an  extreme  subjectivism.  To  the  men  of  this 
direction,  the  empirical,  individual  Ego  becomes  the  absolute ; 
they  forget  every  thing  else  for  it,  or  rather  every  thing  else  has 
a  value  in  their  eyes  only  in  proportion  as  it  refers  and  ministers 
to  the  subject  by  contributing  to  its  demands  and  satisfying  its 
inner  cravings.  Hence  the  question  of  immortality  becomes  now 
the  great  problem  of  philosophy  (in  which  respect  we  may  men- 


228 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


tion  Mendelssohn,  1727-1786,  the  most  important  man  in  this 
direction) ;  the  eternal  duration  of  the  individual  soul  is  the  chief 
point  of  interest;  objective  ideas  or  truths  of  faith,  e.  g.  the  per- 
sonality of  God,  though  not  denied,  cease  to  have  an  interest ;  it 
is  held  as  a  standing  article  of  belief  that  we  can  know  nothing 
of  God.  In  another  current  of  this  direction,  it  is  moral  philoso- 
phy and  esthetics  {Garvey,  1742-1798 ;  Engel,  1741-1802  ;  Ahht, 
1738-1766  ;  Sulzer,  1720-1779)  which  find  a  scientific  treatment, 
because  both  these  preserve  a  subjective  interest.  In  general, 
every  thing  is  viewed  in  its  useful  relations  ;  the  useful  becomes 
the  peculiar  criterion  of  truth ;  that  which  is  not  useful  to  the 
subject,  or  which  does  not  minister  to  his  subjective  ends,  is  set 
aside.  In  connection  with  this  turn  of  mind  stands  the  prevail- 
ing teleological  direction  which  the  investigations  of  nature  as- 
sumed {Beimarus,  1694-1765),  and  the  utilitarian  character  given 
to  ethics.  The  happiness  of  the  individual  was  considered  as 
the  highest  principle  and  the  supreme  end  (Basedow,  1723-1790). 
Even  religion  is  contemplated  from  this  point  of  view.  Reima- 
rus  wrote  a  treatise  upon  the  "  advantages  "  of  religion,  in  which 
he  attempted  to  prove  that  religion  was  not  subversive  of  earthly 
pleasure,  but  rather  increased  it;  and  Steinhart  (1738-1809) 
elaborated,  in  a  number  of  treatises,  the  theme  that  all  wisdom 
consists  alone  in  attaining  happiness,  i.  e.  enduring  satisfaction, 
and  that  the  Christian  religion,  instead  of  forbidding  this,  was 
rather  itself  the  true  doctrine  of  happiness.  In  other  particulars 
Christianity  received  only  a  temperate  respect ;  wherever  it  laid 
claim  to  any  authority  disagreeable  to  the  subject  (as  in  individ- 
ual doctrines  like  that  of  future  punishment),  it  was  opposed,  and 
in  general  the  effort  was  made  to  counteract,  as  far  as  possible,  the 
positive  dogma  by  natural  religion.  Reimarus,  for  exampl-e,  the 
most  zealous  defender  of  theism  and  of  the  teleological  investiga- 
tion of  nature,  is  at  the  same  time  the  author  of  the  Wolfenbiittel 
fragments.  By  criticizing  the  Gospel  history,  and  every  thing 
positive  and  transmitted,  and  by  rationalizing  the  supernatural  in 
religion,  the  subject  displayed  its  new-found  independence.  In 
fine,  the  subjective  standpoint  of  this  period  exhibits  itself  in  the 


TRANSITION  TO  KANT. 


229 


numerous  autobiograpMes  and  self-confessions  then  so  prevalent ; 
the  isolated  self  is  the  object  of  admiring  contemplation  [Rous- 
seau^ 1712-1778,  and  his  confessions) ;  it  beholds  itself  mirrored 
in  its  particular  conditions,  sensations,  and  views — a  sort  of  flirta- 
tion with  itself,  which  often  rises  to  sickly  sentimentality.  Ac- 
cording to  all  this,  it  is  seen  to  be  the  extreme  consequence  of 
subjective  idealism  which  constitutes  the  character  of  the  German 
clearing  up  period,  which  thus  closes  the  series  of  an  idealistic 
development. 


SECTION  XXXYII. 

TRANSITION  TO  KANT. 

The  idealistic  and  the  realistic  stage  of  development  to  which 
we  have  now  been  attending,  each  ended  with  a  one-sided  result. 
Instead  of  actually  and  internally  reconciling  the  opposition  be- 
tween thought  and  being,  they  both  issued  in  denying  the  one  or 
the  other  of  these  factors.  Realism,  on  its  side,  had  made  matter 
absolute ;  and  idealism,  on  its  side,  had  endowed  the  empirical 
Ego  with  the  same  attribute — extremes  in  which  philosophy  was 
threatened  with  total  destruction.  It  had,  in  fact,  in  Germany  as 
in  France,  become  merged  in  the  most  superficial  popular  philoso- 
phy. Then  Kant  arose,  and  brought  again  into  one  channel  the 
two  streams  which,  when  separate  from  each  other,  threatened  to 
lose  themselves  amid  the  sands.  Kant  is  the  great  renovator  of 
philosophy,  who  brought  back  to  their  point  of  divergence  the  one- 
sided efforts  which  had  preceded  him,  and  embraced  them  in  their 
unity  and  totality.  He  stands  in  some  special  and  fitting  rela- 
tion either  antagonistic  or  harmonious  to  all  others — to  Locke 
no  less  than  to  Hume,  to  the  Scottish  philosophers  no  less  than 
to  the  English  and  French  moralists,  to  the  philosophy  of  Leib- 
nitz and  of  Wolff,  as  well  as  to  the  materialism  of  the  French 
and  the  utilitarianism  of  the  German  clearing  up  period.  His 


230 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


relation  to  the  development  of  a  partial  idealism  and  a  one-sided 
realism  is  thus  stated  :  Empiricism  had  made  the  Ego  purely  pas- 
sive and  subordinate  to  the  sensible  external  world — idealism  had 
made  it  purely  active,  and  given  it  a  sovereignty  over  the  sensible 
world ;  Kant  attempted  to  strike  a  balance  between  these  two 
claims,  by  affirming  that  the  Ego  as  practical  is  free  and  autono- 
mic, an  unconditioned  lawgiver  for  itself,  while  as  theoretical  it 
is  receptive  and  conditioned  >y  the  phenomenal  world ;  but  at  the 
same  time  the  theoretical  Ego  contains  the  two  sides  within  itself, 
for  if,  on  the  one  side,  empiricism  may  be  justified  upon  the 
ground  that  the  material  and  only  field  of  all  our  knowledge  is 
furnished  by  experience,  so  on  the  other  side,  rationalism  may  be 
justified  on  the  ground  that  there  is  an  apriori  factor  and  basis 
to  our  knowledge,  for  in  experience  itself  we  make  use  of  concep- 
tions which  are  not  furnished  by  experience,  but  are  contained 
apriori  in  our  understanding. 

In  order,  now,  that  we  may  bring  the  very  elaborate  frame- 
work of  the  Kantian  philosophy  into  a  clearer  outline,  let  us 
briefly  glance  at  its  fundamental  conceptions,  and  notice  its  chief 
principles  and  results.  Kant  subjected  the  activity  of  the  hu- 
man mind  in  knowing,  and  the  origin  of  our  experience,  to  his 
critical  investigation.  Hence  his  philosophy  is  called  critical 
philosophy,  or  criticism,  because  it  aims  to  be  essentially  an  ex- 
amination of  our  faculty  of  knowledge ;  it  is  also  called  transcen- 
dental philosophy,  since  Kant  calls  the  reflection  of  the  reason 
upon  its  relation  to  the  objective  world,  a  transcendental  reflec- 
tion (transcendental  must  not  be  confounded  with  transcendent), 
or,  in  other  words,  a  transcendental  knowledge  is  one  "  which 
does  not  relate  so  much  to  objects  of  knowledge,  as  to  our  way 
of  knowing  them,  so  far  as  this  is  apriori  possible."  The  exami- 
nation of  the  faculty  of  knowledge,  which  Kant  attempts  in  his 
"  Critich  of  Pure  Beason.j'''  shows  the  following  results.  All 
knowledge  is  a  product  of  two  factors,  the  knowing  subject  and 
the  external  world.  Of  these  two  factors,  the  latter  furnishes 
our  knowledge  with  experience,  as  the  matter,  and  the  former 
with  the  conceptions  of  the  understanding,  as  the  form,  through 


TRANSITION  TO  KANT. 


231 


which  a  connected  knowledge,  or  a  synthesis  of  our  perceptions 
in  a  whole  of  experience  first  becomes  possible.  If  there  were 
no  external  world,  then  would  there  be  no  phenomena ;  if  there 
were  no  understanding,  then  these  phenomena,  or  perceptions, 
which  are  infinitely  manifold,  would  never  be  brought  into  the 
unity  of  a  notion,  and  thus  no  experience  were  possible.  Thus, 
while  intuitions  without  conceptions  are  blind,  and  conceptions 
without  intuitions  are  empty,  knowledge  is  a  union  of  the  two, 
since  it  re(][uires  that  the  form  of  conception  should  be  filled  with 
the  matter  of  experience,  and  that  the  matter  of  experience 
should  be  apprehended  in  the  net  of  the  understanding's  concep- 
tions. Nevertheless,  we  do  not  know  things  as  they  are  in  them- 
selves. Firsts  because  the  categories,  or  the  forms  of  our  under- 
standing prevent.  Ey  bringing  that  which  is  given  as  the  mate- 
rial of  knowledge  into  our  own  conceptions  as  the  form,  there  is 
manifestly  a  change  in  respect  of  the  objects,  which  become 
thought  of  not  as  they  are,  but  only  as  we  apprehend  them ;  they 
appear  to  us  only  as  they  are  transmuted  into  categories.  But 
besides  this  subjective  addition,  there  is  yet  another.  Secondly^ 
we  do  not  know  things  as  they  are  in  themselves,  because  even 
the  intuitions  which  we  bring  within  the  form  of  the  understand- 
ing's conceptions,  are  not  pure  and  uncolored,  but  are  already 
penetrated  by  a  subjective  medium,  namely,  by  the  universal  form 
of  all  objects  of  sense,  space  and  time.  Space  and  time  are  also 
subjective  additions,  forms  of  sensuous  intuition,  which  are  just 
as  originally  present  in  our  minds  as  the  fundamental  conceptions 
or  categories  of  our  understanding.  That  which  we  would  repre- 
sent intuitively  to  ourselves  we  must  place  in  space  and  time,  for 
without  these  no  intuition  is  possible.  From  this  it  follows  that 
it  is  only  phenomena  which  we  know,  and  not  things  in  themselves 
separate  from  space  and  time. 

A  superficial  apprehension  of  these  Kantian  principles  might 
lead  one  to  suppose  that  Kant's  criticism  did  not  essentially  go 
beyond  the  standpoint  of  Locke's  empiricism.  But  such  a  sup- 
position disappears  upon  a  careful  scrutiny.  Kant  was  obliged  to 
recognize  with  Hume  that  the  conceptions,  cause  and  efiect,  sub- 


232 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


Etance  and  attribute,  and  the  other  conceptions  which  the  human 
understanding  sees  itself  necessitated  to  think  in  the  phenomena, 
and  in  which  every  one  of  its  thoughts  must  be  found,  do  not  arise 
from  any  experience  of  the  sense.  For  instance,  when  we  become 
afTected  through  different  senses,  and  perceive  a  white  color,  a 
sweet  taste,  a  rough  surface,  &c.,  and  predicate  all  these  of  one 
thing,  as  a  piece  of  sugar,  there  come  from  without  only  the  plu- 
rality of  sensations,  while  the  conception  of  unity  cannot  come 
through  sensation,  but  is  a  category^ or  conception  borne  over  to 
the  sensations  from  the  mind  itself.  But  instead  of  denying,  for 
this  reason,  the  reality  of  these  conceptions  of  the  understanding, 
Kant  took  a  step  in  advance,  assigning  a  peculiar  provin<j)e  to  this 
activity  of  the  understanding,  and  showing  that  these  forms  of 
thought  thus  furnished  to  the  matter  of  experience  are  immanent 
laws  of  the  human  faculty  of  knowledge,  the  peculiar  laws  of  the 
understanding's  operations,  which  may  be  obtained  by  a  perfect 
analysis  of  our  thinking  activity.  (Of  these  laws  or  conceptions 
there  are  twelve,  viz.,  unity,  plurality,  totality;  reality,  negation, 
limitation ;  substantiality,  causality,  reciprocal  action ;  possibili- 
ty, actuality,  and  necessity.) 

From  what  has  been  said  we  can  see  the  three  chief  principles 
of  the  Kantian  theory  of  knowledge : 

1.  We  know  only  Phenomena  and  not  Things  in  Them- 
selves.— The  experience  furnished  us  by  the  external  world  be- 
comes so  adjusted  and  altered  in  its  relations  (for  we  apprehend  it 
at  first  in  the  subjective  framework  of  space  and  time,  and  then 
in  the  equally  subjective  forms  of  our  understanding's  concep- 
tions), that  it  no  longer  represents  the  thing  itself  in  its  original 
condition,  pure  and  unmixed. 

2.  Nevertheless  Experience  is  the  only  Province  of  our 
Knowledge,  and  there  is  no  Science  of  the  Unconditioned. 
— This  follows  of  course,  for  since  every  knowledge  is  the  product 
of  the  matter  of  experience,  and  the  form  of  the  understanding,  and 
depends  thus  upon  the  co-working  of  the  sensory  and  the  under- 
standing, then  no  knowledge  is  possible  of  objects  for  which  one  of 
these  factors,  experience,  fails  us ;  a  knowledge  alone  from  theun- 


TRANSITION  TO  KANT. 


233 


derstanding's  conceptions  of  the  unconditioned  is  illusory  since 
the  sensory  can  show  no  unconditioned  object  corresponding  to  the 
conception.  Hence  the  questions  which  Kant  places  at  the  head 
of  his  whole  Critick ;  how  are  synthetical  judgments  apriori  pos- 
sible ?  i.  e.  can  we  widen  our  knowledge  apriori,  by  thought  alone, 
beyond  the  sensuous  experience  ?  is  a  knowledge  of  the  super- 
sensible possible  ?  must  be  answered  with  an  unconditional  nega- 
tive. 

3.  Still,  if  the  human  knowledge  makes  no  effort  to  stride 
beyond  the  narrow  limits  of  experience,  i.  e.  to  become  transcend- 
ent, it  involves  itself  in  the  greatest  contradictions.  The  three 
ideas  of  the  reason,  the  psychological,  the  cosmological,  and  the 
theological,  viz.  (a)  the  idea  of  an  absolute  subject,  i.  e.  of  the 
soul,  or  of  immortality,  (h)  the  idea  of  the  world  as  a  totality  of 
all  conditions  and  phenomena,  (c)  the  idea  of  a  most  perfect 
being — are  so  wholly  without  application  to  the  empirical  ac- 
tuality, are  so  truly  regulative,  and  not  constitutive  principles, 
which  are  only  the  pure  products  of  the  reason,  and  are  so  en- 
tirely without  a  correspondent  object  in  experience,  that  when- 
ever they  are  applied  to  experience,  i.  e.  become  conceived  of  as 
actually  existing  objects,  they  lead  to  pure  logical  errors,  to  the 
most  obvious  paralogisms  and  sophisms.  These  errors,  which  are 
partly  false  conclusions  and  paralogisms,  and  partly  unavoidable 
contradictions  of  the  reason  with  itself,  Kant  undertook  to  show 
in  reference  to  all  the  ideas  of  the  reason.  Take,  e.  g.  the  cosmo- 
logical idea.  "Whenever  the  reason  posits  any  transcendental 
expressions  in  reference  to  the  universe,  i.  e.  attempts  to  apply 
the  forms  of  the  finite  to  the  infinite,  it  is  at  once  evident  that 
the  antithesis  of  these  expressions  can  be  proved  just  as  well  as 
the  thesis.  The  affirmation  that  the  world  has  a  beginning  in 
time,  and  limits  in  space,  can  be  proved  as  well  as,  and  no  bet- 
ter than  its  opposite,  that  the  world  has  no  beginning  in  time, 
and  no  spacial  limits.  Whence  it  follows  that  all  speculative  cos 
mology  is  an  assumption  by  the  reason.  So  also  with  the  theo- 
logical idea ;  it  rests  on  bare  logical  paralogisms,  and  false  con- 
clusions, as  Kant,  with  great  acuteness,  shows  in  reference  to  each 


234 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


of  the  proofs  for  the  being  of  a  God,  which  previous  dogmatic 
philosophies  had  attempted.  It  is  therefore  impossible  to  prove 
and  to  conceive  of  the  existence  of  a  God  as  a  Supreme  Being,  or 
of  the  soul  as  a  real  subject,  or  of  a  comprehending  universe. 
The  peculiar  problems  of  metaphysics  lie  outside  the  province 
of  philosophical  knowledge. 

Such  is  the  negative  part  of  the  Kantian  philosophy ;  its  pos- 
itive complement  is  found  in  the  "  GriticJc  of  the  Practical 
Beasony  While  the  mind  as  theoretical  and  cognitive  is  wholly 
conditioned,  and  ruled  by  the  objective  and  sensible  world,  and 
thus  knowledge  is  only  possible  through  intuition,  yet  as  practical 
does  it  go  wholly  beyond  the  given  (the  sense  impulse),  and  is  de- 
termined only  through  the  categorical  imperative,  and  the  moral 
law,  which  is  itself,  and  is  therefore  free  and  autonomic;  the 
ends  which  it  pursues  are  those  which  itself,  as  moral  spirit, 
places  before  itself ;  objects  are  no  more  its  masters  and  lawgiv- 
ers, to  which  it  must  yield  if  it  would  know  the  truth,  but  its 
servants,  which  it  may  use  for  its  own  ends  in  actualizing  its 
moral  law.  While  the  theoretical  mind  is  united  to  a  world  of 
sense  and  phenomena,  a  world  obedient  to  necessary  laws,  the 
practical  mind,  by  virtue  of  the  freedom  essential  to  it,  by  virtue 
of  its  direction  towards  an  absolute  aim,  belongs  to  a  purely  in- 
telligible and  supersensible  world.  This  is  the  practical  idealism 
of  Kant,  from  which  he  derives  the  three  practical  postulates  of 
the  immortality  of  the  soul,  moral  freedom,  and  the  being  of  a 
God,  which,  as  theoretical  truths,  had  been  before  denied. 

With  this  brief  sketch  for  our  guidance,  let  us  now  pass  on 
to  a  more  extended  exposition  of  the  Kantian  Philosophy. 


KANT. 


235 


SECTION  XXXVIII. 

KANT. 

Immanuel  Kant  was  born  at  Konigsberg  in  Prussia,  April 
22,  1724.  His  father  an  honest  saddlemaker,  and  his  mother  a 
prudent  and  pious  woman,  exerted  a  good  influence  upon  him  in 
his  earliest  youth.  In  the  year  1740  he  entered  the  university, 
where  he  connected  himself  with  the  theological  department,  but 
devoted  the  most  of  his  time  to  philosophy,  mathematics,  and 
physics.  He  commenced  his  literary  career  in  his  twenty-third 
year,  in  1747,  with  a  treatise  entitled  "  Thoughts  concerning  the 
true  estimate  of  Living  Forces.''^  He  was  obliged  by  his  pecu- 
niary circumstances  to  spend  some  years  as  a  private  tutor  in  dif- 
ferent families  in  the  neighborhood  of  Konigsberg.  In  1755  he 
took  a  place  in  the  university  as  privat-docent,^^  which  position 
he  held  for  fifteen  years,  during  which  time  he  gave  lectures  upon 
logic,  metaphysics,  physics,  mathematics,  and  also,  during  the 
latter  part  of  the  time,  upon  ethics,  anthropology,  and  physical 
geography.  At  this  period  he  adhered  for  the  most  part  to  the 
school  of  Wolff,  though  early  expressing  his  doubts  in  respect  of 
dogmatism.  From  the  publication  of  his  first  treatise  he  applied 
himself  to  writing  with  unwearied  activity,  though  his  great 
work,  the  "  Critich  of  pure  Beason^''  did  not  appear  till  his 
fifty-seventh  year,  1781.  His  Critich  of  the  practical  Beason^'' 
was  issued  in  1787,  and  his  Religion  within  the  hounds  of 
pure  Reason^''''  in  1793.  In  1770,  in  his  forty-sixth  year,  he  was 
chosen  ordinary  professor  of  logic  and  metaphysics,  a  chair  which 
he  continued  to  fill  uninterruptedly  till  1794,  when  the  weakness  of 
age  obliged  him  to  leave  it.  Invitations  to  professorships  at  Jena, 
Erlangen,  and  Halle,  were  given  him  and  rejected.  As  soon  as 
he  became  known,  the  noblest  and  most  active  minds  flocked  from 
all  parts  of  Germany  to  Konigsberg,  to  sit  at  the  feet  of  the  sage 
who  was  master  there.    One  of  his  worshippers,  Reuss,  professor 


236 


A  HISTORY  OP  PHILOSOPHY. 


of  philosophy  at  Wiirzburg,  who  abode  but  a  brief  time  at  Ko- 
nigsberg,  entered  his  chamber,  declaring  that  he  had  come  one 
hundred  and  sixty  miles*  in  order  to  see  Kant  and  to  speak  with 
him. — During  the  last  seventeen  years  of  his  life  he  occupied  a 
little  house  with  a  garden,  in  a  quiet  quarter  of  the  city,  where 
his  calm  and  regular  mode  of  life  might  be  undisturbed.  His 
habits  of  life  were  very  simple.  He  never  left  his  native  province 
even  to  go  as  far  as  Dantzic.  His  longest  journeys  were  to  visit 
some  country-seats  in  the  environs  of  Konigsberg.  Neverthe- 
less, as  his  lectures  upon  physical  geography  testify,  he  acquired 
by  reading  the  most  accurate  knowledge  of  the  earth.  He  knew 
all  of  Rousseau's  works,  of  which  Emile  at  its  first  appearance 
detained  him  for  a  number  of  days  from  his  customary  walks. 
Kant  died  February  12,  1804,  in  the  eightieth  year  of  his  life. 
He  was  of  medium  stature,  finely  built,  with  blue  eyes,  and  always 
enjoyed  sound  health  till  in  his  latter  j^ears,  when  he  became 
childish.  He  was  never  married.  His  character  was  marked  by 
an  earnest  love  of  truth,  great  candor,  and  simple  modesty. 

Though  Kant's  great  work,  the  "  Critick  of  pure  Reason," 
which  created  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  philosophy,  did  not  ap- 
pear till  1781 ;  yet  had  he  previously  shown  an  approach  towards 
the  same  standpoint  in  several  smaller  treatises,  and  particularly 
in  his  inaugural  dissertation  which  appeared  in  1770,  "  Concern- 
ing the  form  and  the  principles  of  the  Sense-  World  and  that 
of  the  Understanding.''''  Kant  himself  refers  the  inner  genesis 
of  his  critical  standpoint  to  Hume.  "  I  freely  confess,"  he 
says,  that  it  was  David  Hume  who  first  roused  me  from  my 
dogmatic  slumber,  and  gave  a  different  direction  to  my  investi- 
gations in  the  field  of  speculative  philosophy."  The  critical  view 
therefore  first  became  developed  in  Kant  as  he  left  the  dogmatic 
metaphysical  school,  the  Wolffian  philosophy  in  which  he  had 
grown  up,  and  went  over  to  the  study  of  a  sceptical  empiricism 
in  Hume.  "  Hitherto,"  says  Kant  at  the  close  of  his  Critick  of 
pure  Reason,  "  men  have  been  obliged  to  choose  either  a  dogmati- 


*  A  German  mile  is  about  four  and  a  half  English  miles. — Tr. 


KANT. 


237 


cal  direction,  like  "WolflF,  or  a  sceptical  one,  like  Hume.  The 
critical  road  alone  is  yet  open.  If  the  reader  has  had  pleasure 
and  patience  in  travelling  along  this  in  my  company,  let  him  now 
contribute  his  aid  in  making  this  by-path  into  a  highway,  in  order 
that  that  which  many  centuries  could  not  effect  may  now  be  at- 
tained before  the  expiration  of  the  present,  and  the  reason  be- 
come perfectly  content  in  respect  of  that  which  has  hitherto,  but 
in  vain,  engaged  its  curiosity."  Kant  had  the  clearest  conscious- 
ness respecting  the  relation  of  his  criticism  to  the  previous  phi- 
losophy. He  compares  the  revolution  which  he  himself  had 
brought  about  in  philosophy  with  that  wrought  by  Copernicus  in 
astronomy.  "  Hitherto  it  has  been  assumed  that  all  our  knowl- 
edge must  regulate  itself  according  to  the  objects ;  but  all  at- 
tempts to  make  any  thing  out  of  them  apriori,  through  notions 
whereby  our  knowledge  might  be  enlarged,  proved,  under  this 
supposition,  abortive.  Let  us,  then,  try  for  once  whether  we  do 
not  succeed  better  with  the  problems  of  metaphysics,  by  assuming 
that  the  objects  must  regulate  themselves  according  to  our  knowl- 
edge, a  mode  of  viewing  the  subject  which  accords  so  much  better 
with  the  desired  possibility  of  a  knowledge  of  them  apriori, 
which  must  decide  something  concerning  objects  before  they  are 
given  us.  The  circumstances  are  in  this  case  precisely  the  same 
as  with  the  first  thoughts  of  Copernicus,  who,  finding  that  his  at- 
tempt to  explain  the  motions  of  the  heavenly  bodies  did  not  suc- 
ceed, when  he  assumed  the  whole  starry  host  to  revolve  around 
the  spectator,  tried  whether  he  should  not  succeed  better,  if  he 
left  the  spectator  himself  to  turn,  and  the  stars  on  the  contrary 
at  rest."  In  these  words  we  have  the  principle  of  a  subjective 
idealism,  most  clearly  and  decidedly  expressed. 

In  the  succeeding  exposition  of  the  Kantian  philosophy  we 
shall  most  suitably  follow  the  classification  adopted  by  Kant  him- 
self His  principle  of  classification  is  a  psychological  one.  All 
the  faculties  of  the  soul,  he  says,  may  be  referred  to  three,  which 
are  incapable  of  any  farther  reduction;  knowing,  feeling,  and 
desire.  The  first  faculty  contains  the  principles,  the  governing 
laws  for  all  the  three.    So  far  as  the  faculty  of  knowledge  con- 


238 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


taius  the  principles  of  knowledge  itself,  is  it  theoretical  reason, 
and  SO  far  as  it  contains  the  principles  of  desire  and  action,  is  it 
practical  reason,  while,  so  far  as  it  contains  the  principles  which 
regulate  tiie  feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain,  is  it  a  faculty  of 
judgment.  Thus  the  Kantian  philosophy  (on  its  critical  side) 
divides  itself  into  three  criticks,  (1)  Critick  of  pure  i.  e.  theoret- 
ical reason,  (2)  Critick  of  practical  reason,  (8)  Critick  of  the 
judgment. 

I.  Critick  of  pure  Reason. — The  critick  of  pure  reason. 
Bays  Kant,  is  the  inventory  in  which  all  our  possessions  through 
pure  reason  are  systematically  arranged.  What  are  these  pos- 
sessions ?  When  we  have  a  cognition,  what  is  it  that  we  bring 
thereto  ?  To  answer  these  questions,  Kant  explores  the  two 
chief  fields  of  our  theoretical  consciousness,  the  two  chief  factors 
of  all  knowledge,  the  sensory  and  the  understanding.  Firstly : 
what  does  our  sensory  or  our  faculty  of  intuition  possess  apriori  ? 
Secondly ;  what  is  the  apriori  possession  of  our  understanding  ? 
The  first  of  these  questions  is  discussed  in  the  transcendental 
jEstlieiics  (a  title  which  we  must  take  not  in  the  sense  now  com- 
monly attached  to  the  word,  but  in  its  etymological  signification 
as  the  "  science  of  the  apriori  principles  of  the  sensory  ") ;  and 
the  second  in  the  transcendental  Logic  or  Analytics.  Sense  and 
understanding  are  thus  the  two  factors  of  all  knowledge,  the  two 
stalks — as  Kant  expresses  it — of  our  knowledge,  which  may 
spring  from  a  common  root,  though  this  is  unknown  to  us  :  the 
sensory  is  the  receptivity,  and  the  understanding  the  spontaneity 
of  our  cognitive  faculty ;  by  the  sensory,  which  can  only  furnish 
intuitions,  objects  become  given  to  us ;  by  the  understanding, 
which  forms  conceptions,  these  objects  become  ihought.  Concep- 
tions without  intuitions  are  empty  ;  intuitions  without  conceptions 
are  blind.  Intuitions  and  conceptions  constitute  the  reciprocally 
complemental  elements  of  our  intellectual  activity.  What  now 
are  the  apriori  principles  respectively  of  our  knowledge,  through 
the  sense  and  through  the  thought  ?  The  first  of  these  questions, 
Rs  already  said,  is  answered  by 

1.  The  Transcendental  uSIsthetics. — To  anticipate  at  once 


KANT. 


239 


the  answer,  we  may  say  that  the  apriori  principles  of  our  knowledge 
through  the  sense,  the  original  forms  of  sensuous  intuition,  are 
space  and  time.  Space  is  the  form  of  the  external  sense,  by 
means  of  which  objects  are  given  to  us  as  existing  outside  of  our- 
selves separately  and  conjointly ;  time  is  the  form  of  the  inner 
sense,  by  means  of  which  the  circumstances  of  our  own  soul-life 
become  objects  to  our  consciousness.  If  we  abstract  every  thing 
belonging  to  the  matter  of  our  sensations,  space  remains  as  the 
universal  form  in  which  all  the  materials  of  the  external  sense 
must  be  arranged.  If  we  abstract  every  thing  which  belongs  to 
the  matter  of  our  inner  sense,  time  remains  as  the  form  which 
the  movement  of  the  mind  had  filled.  Space  and  time  are  the 
highest  forms  of  the  outer  and  inner  sense.  That  these  forms 
lie  apriori  in  the  human  mind,  Kant  proves,  first,  directly  from 
the  nature  of  these  conceptions  themselves ;  and,  secondly,  indi- 
rectly by  showing  that  without  apriori  presupposing  these  con- 
ceptions, it  were  not  possible  to  have  any  certain  science  of  un- 
doubted validity.  The  first  of  these  he  calls  the  meta^Jiy steal, 
and  the  second  the  transcendental  discussion. 

(1.)  In  the  metaphysical  discussion  it  is  to  be  shown,  (a)  that 
space  and  time  are  apriori  given,  (h)  that  these  notions  belong  to 
the  sensory  (assthetics)  and  not  to  the  understanding  (logic),  i.  e. 
that  they  are  intuitions  and  not  conceptions,  {a)  That  space 
and  time  are  apriori  is  clear  from  the  fact  that  every  experience, 
before  it  can  be,  must  presuppose  already  a  space  and  time.  I 
perceive  something  as  external  to  me ;  but  this  external  presup- 
poses space.  Again,  I  have  two  sensations  at  the  same  time  and 
successively ;  this  presupposes  time.  (5)  Space  and  time,  how- 
ever, are  by  no  means  conceptions,  but  forms  of  intuition,  or  in- 
tuitions themselves.  For  in  every  universal  conception  the  indi- 
vidual is  comprehended  under  it,  and  is  not  a  part  of  it ;  but  in 
space  and  time,  all  individual  spaces  and  times  are  parts  of  and 
contained  within  the  universal  space  and  the  universal  time. 

(2.)  In  the  transcendental  discussion  Kant  draws  his  proof 
indirectly  by  showing  that  certain  sciences,  universally  recognized 
as  sucjb,  can  only  be  conceived  upon  the  supposition  that  space 


240 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


and  time  are  apriori.  A  pure  mathematics  is  only  possible  on 
the  ground  that  space  and  time  are  pure  and  not  empirical  intu- 
itions. Kant  comprises  the  whole  problem  of  the  Transcendental 
^Esthetics  in  the  question — how  are  pure  mathematical  sciences 
possible  ?  The  ground,  says  Kant,  upon  which  pure  mathematics 
moves,  is  space  and  time.  But  now  mathematics  utters  its  prin- 
ciples as  universal  and  necessary.  Universal  and  necessary  prin- 
ciples, however,  can  never  come  from  experience  ;  they  must  have 
an  apriori  ground  ;  consequently  it  is  impossible  that  space  and 
time,  out  of  which  mathematics  receives  its  principles,  should  be 
first  given  aposteriori ;  they  must  be  given  apriori  as  pure  in- 
tuitions. Hence  we  have  a  knowledge  apriori,  and  a  science 
which  rests  upon  apriori  grounds  ;  and  the  matter  simply  resolves 
itself  into  this,  viz.  :  whosoever  should  deny  that  apriori  knowl- 
edge can  be,  must  also  at  the  same  time  deny  the  possibility  of 
mathematics.  But  if  the  fundamental  truths  of  mathematics 
are  intuitions  apriori,  we  might  conclude  that  there  may  be  also 
apriori  conceptions,  out  of  which,  in  connection  with  these  pure 
intuitions,  a  metaphysics  could  be  formed.  This  is  the  positive 
result  of  the  Transcendental  jSJsthetics,  though  with  this  positive 
side  the  negative  is  closely  connected.  Intuition  or  immediate 
knowledge  can  be  attained  by  man  only  through  the  sensory, 
whose  universal  intuitions  are  only  space  and  time.  But  since 
these  intuitions  of  space  and  time  are  no  objective  relations,  but 
only  subjective  forms,  there  is  therefore  something  subjective 
mingled  with  all  our  intuitions,  and  we  can  know  things  not  as 
they  are  in  themselves,  but  only  as  they  appear  to  us  through 
this  subjective  medium  of  space  and  time.  This  is  the  meaning 
of  the  Kantian  principle,  that  we  do  not  know  things  in  them- 
selves, but  only  phenomena.  But  if  on  this  account  we  should 
affirm  that  all  things  are  in  space  and  time,  this  would  be  too 
much  ;  they  are  in  space  and  time  only  for  us, — all  phenomena 
of  the  external  sense  appearing  both  in  space  and  in  time,  and  all 
phenomena  of  the  inner  sense  appearing  only  in  time.  Notwith- 
standing this,  Kant  would  in  no  ways  have  admitted  that  the 
world  of  sense  is  mere  appearance.    He  affirmed,  that  while  he 


KANT. 


241 


contended  for  a  transcendental  ideality,  there  was,  nevertheless,  an 
empirical  reality  of  space  and  time  :  things  external  to  ourselves 
exist  just  as  certainly  as  do  we  and  the  circumstances  within  us, 
only  they  are  not  represented  to  us  as  they  are  in  themselves  and 
in  their  independence  of  space  and  of  time.  As  to  the  question, 
whether  there  is  any  thing  in  the  thing  itself  back  of  the  phe- 
nomena, Kant  intimates  in  the  first  edition  of  his  Critick,  that  it 
is  not  impossible  that  the  Ego  and  the  thing-in-itself  are  one  and 
the  same  thinking  substance.  This  thought,  which  Kant  threw 
out  as  a  mere  conjecture,  was  the  source  of  all  the  wider  de- 
velopments of  the  latest  philosophy.  It  was  afterwards  the  fun- 
damental idea  of  the  Fichtian  system,  that  the  Ego  does  not 
become  affected  through  a  thing  essentially  foreign  to  it,  but 
purely  through  itself.  In  the  second  edition  of  his  Critick,  how- 
ever, Kant  omitted  this  sentence. 

The  Transcendental  Esthetics  closes  with  the  discussion  of 
space  and  time,  i.  e.  with  finding  out  what  is  in  the  sensory  apriori. 
But  the  human  mind  cannot  be  satisfied  merely  with  the  receptive 
relation  of  the  sensory;  it  does  not  simply  receive  objects,  but  it 
applies  to  these  its  own  spontaneity,  and  attempts  to  think  these 
through  its  conceptions,  and  embrace  them  in  the  forms  of  its  under- 
standing. It  is  the  object  of  the  Transcendental  Analytic  (which 
forms  the  first  part  of  the  Transcendental  Logic) ^  to  examine  these 
apriori  conceptions  or  forms  of  thought  which  lie  originally  in  the 
understanding,  as  the  forms  of  space  and  time  do  in  the  intuitive 
faculty. 

2.  The  Transcendental  Analytic. — It  is  the  first  problem 
of  the  Analytic  to  attain  the  pure  conceptions  of  the  understand- 
ing. Aristotle  had  already  attempted  to  form  a  table  of  these 
conceptions  or  categories,  but  he  had  collected  them  empirically 
instead  of  deriving  them  from  a  common  principle,  and  had  num- 
bered among  them  space  and  time,  though  these  are  no  pure  con- 
ceptions of  the  understanding,  but  only  forms  of  intuition.  But 
if  we  would  have  a  perfect,  pure,  and  regularly  arranged  table  of 
all  the  conceptions  of  the  understanding,  or  all  the  apriori  forms 
of  thought,  we  must  look  for  a  principle  out  of  which  we  may 
11 


242 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


derive  them.  This  principle  is  the  judgment.  The  general  funda* 
mental  conceptions  of  the  understanding  may  be  perfectly  attained 
if  we  look  at  all  the  different  modes  or  forms  of  the  judgment. 
For  this  end  Kant  considers  the  different  kinds  of  judgment  as 
ordinarily  pointed  out  to  us  by  the  science  of  logic.  Now  logic 
shows  that  there  are  four  kinds  of  judgment,  viz.,  judgments  of 

Quantity.  Quxdity.  Relation.  Modality. 

Universal,  Affirmative,  Categorical,  Problematical, 

Plurative,  Negative,  Hypothetical,  Assertive, 

Singular.  Illimitable.  Disjmictive.  Apodictic. 

From  these  judgments  result  the  same  number  of  fundamental 
conceptions  or  categories  of  the  understanding,  viz.  : 


Quantity. 
Totality, 
Multiplicity, 
Unity. 


Quality. 
Reality, 
Negation, 
Limitation. 


Relation. 

Substance  and  in- 
herence. 

Cause  and  depend- 
ence, 

Reciprocal  action. 


Possibility  and  im- 
possibility, 

Being  and  not-be- 
ing, 

Necessity  and  acci- 
dence. 


From  these  twelve  categories  all  the  rest  may  be  derived  by 
combination.  From  the  fact  that  these  categories  are  shown  to 
belong  apriori  to  the  understanding,  it  follows,  (1)  that  these 
conceptions  are  apriori,  and  hence  have  a  necessary  and  universal 
validity,  (2)  that  by  themselves  they  are  empty  forms,  and  attain 
a  content  only  through  intuitions.  But  since  our  intuition  is 
wholly  through  the  sense,  these  categories  have  their  validity  only 
in  their  application  to  the  sensuous  intuition,  which  becomes  a 
proper  experience  only  when  apprehended  in  the  conceptions  of 
the  understanding. — Here  we  meet  a  second  question  ;  how  does 
this  happen  ?  How  do  objects  become  subsumed  under  these 
forms  of  the  understanding,  which  for  themselves  are  so  empty  ? 

There  would  be  no  difficulty  with  this -subsumption  if  the  ob- 
jects and  the  conceptions  of  the  understanding  were  the  same  in 
kind.  But  they  are  not.  Because  the  objects  come  to  the  under- 
standing from  the  sensory,  they  are  of  the  nature  of  the  sense. 


KANT. 


243 


Hence  the  question  arises  :  how  can  these  sensible  objects  be  sub- 
sumed under  pure  conceptions  of  the  understanding,  and  fundamen- 
tal principles  (judgments  apriori),  be  formed  from  them  ?  This 
cannot  result  immediately,  but  there  must  come  in  between  the 
two,  a  third,  which  must  have  some  thing  in  common  with  each, 
i.  e.  which  is  in  one  respect  pure  and  apriori,  and  in  another  sen- 
sible. The  two  pure  intuitions  of  the  Transcendental  -Esthetics, 
space  and  time,  especially  the  latter,  are  of  such  a  nature.  A 
transcendental  time  determination,  as  the  determination  of  coeta- 
neousness,  corresponds  on  the  one  side  to  the  categories,  because  it 
is  apriori,  and  on  the  other  side  to  the  phenomenal  objects,  be- 
cause every  thing  phenomenal  can  be  represented  only  in  time. 
The  transcendental  time  determination,  Kant  calls  in  this  respect 
the  transcendental  schema,  and  the  use  which  the  understanding 
makes  of  it,  he  calls  the  transcendental  scJiematism  of  the  pure 
understanding.  The  schema  is  a  product  of  the  imaginative 
faculty,  which  self'-actively  determines  the  inner  sense  to  this, 
though  the  schema  is  something  other  than  a  mere  imagef  An 
image  is  always  merely  an  individual  and  determinate  intuition, 
but  the  schema  merely  represents  the  universal  process  of  the 
imagination,  by  which  it  furnishes  for  a  conception  a  proper  image. 
Hence  the  schema  can  only  exist  in  the  conception,  and  never  suf- 
fers itself  to  be  brought  within  the  sensuous  intuition.  If,  now, 
we  consider  more  closely  the  schematism  of  the  understanding, 
and  seek  the  transcendental  time  determination  for  every  category, 
we  find  that : 

(!)  Quantity  has  for  a  universal  schema  the  series  of  time  or 
number,  which  represents  the  successive  addition  of  one  and  one 
of  the  same  kind.  I  can  only  represent  to  myself  the  pure  un- 
derstanding conception  of  greatness,  except  as  I  bring  into  the 
imagination  a  number  of  units  one  after  another.  If  I  stop  this 
process  at  its  first  beginning,  the  result  is  unity ;  if  I  let  it  go  on 
farther  I  have  plurality ;  and  if  I  suffer  it  to  continue  without 
limit,  there  is  totality.  Whenever  I  meet  with  objects  in  the 
phenomenal  world,  which  I  can  only  apprehend  successively,  I 


244 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


am  directed  to  apply  the  conception  of  greatness,  which  would  not 
be  possible  without  the  schema  of  the  series  of  time. 

(2)  Quality  has  for  its  schema  the  content  of  time.  If  I  wish 
to  represent  to  myself  the  understanding  conception  of  reality, 
which  belongs  to  quality,  I  bring  before  me  in  thought  a  time 
filled  up,  or  a  content  of  time.  That  is  real  which  fills  a  time. 
If  also  I  would  represent  to  myself  the  pure  understanding  con- 
ception of  negation,  I  bring  into  thought  a  void  time. 

(3)  The  categories  of  relation  take  their  schemata  from  the 
order  of  time  ;  for  if  I  would  represent  to  myself  a  determinate 
relation,  I  always  bring  into  thought  a  determinate  order  of  things 
in  time.  Substance  appears  as  the  persistence  of  the  real  in 
time  ;  causality  as  regular  succession  in  time ;  reciprocal  action 
as  the  regular  coetaneousness  of  the  determinations  in  the  one 
substance,  with  the  determinations  in  the  other. 

(4)  The  categories  of  modality  take  their  schema  from  the 
whole  of  time,  i.  e.  from  whether,  and  how,  an  object  belongs  to 
time.  The  schema  of  possibility  is  the  general  harmony  of  a  re- 
presentation with  the  conditions  of  time ;  the  schema  of  actuality 
is  the  existence  of  an  object  in  a  determined  time ;  that  of  neces- 
sity is  the  existence  of  an  object  for  all  time. 

We  are  thus  furnished  with  all  the  means  for  forming  meta- 
physical fundamental  principles  (judgments  apriori) ;  we  have, 
firstly^  conceptions  apriori,  and  secondly,  schemata  through  which 
we  can  apply  these  conceptions  to  objects;  for  since  every  object 
which  we  can  perceive,  falls  in  time,  so  must  it  also  fall  under 
one  of  these  schemata,  which  have  been  borrowed  from  time,  and 
must  consequently  permit  the  corresponding  category  to  be  ap- 
plied to  it.  The  judgments  which  we  here  attain  are  synthetical. 
They  are,  corresponding  to  the  four  classes  of  categories,  the  fol- 
lowing: (1)  All  phenomena  are,  according  to  intuition,  extensive 
greatness,  since  they  cannot  be  apprehended  otherwise  than 
through  space  and  time.  On  this  principle  the  axioms  of  intui- 
tion rely.  (2)  All  phenomena  are,  according  to  sensation,  inten- 
sive greatness,  since  every  sensation  has  a  determined  degree,  and 
is  capable  of  increase  and  diminution.    On  this  principle  the  an- 


KANT. 


245 


ticipations  of  perception  rest.  (3)  The  phenomena  stand  under 
necessary  time-determinations.  They  contain  the  substantial, 
which  abides,  and  the  accidental,  which  changes.  In  reference 
to  the  change  of  accidence,  they  are  subject  to  the  law  of  the  fol- 
lowing connection,  through  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect :  as 
substances  they  are,  in  respect  of  their  accidences,  in  a  constant 
reciprocal  action.  From  this  principle  spring  the  analogies  of 
experience.  (4)  The  postulates  of  empirical  thinking  are  con- 
tained in  the  principles  :  (a)  that  which  coincides  with  the  formal 
conditions  of  experience,  is  possible,  and  can  become  phenome- 
non ;  (h)  that  which  agrees  with  the  material  conditions  of  expe- 
rience is  actual,  and  is  phenomenon ;  (c)  that,  whose  connection 
with  the  actual  is  determined  according  to  the  universal  condi- 
tions of  experience,  is  necessary,  and  must  be  phenomenon.  Such 
are  the  possible  and  authorized  synthetical  judgments  apriori. 
But  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  we  are  entitled  to  make  only  an 
empirical  use  of  all  these  conceptions  and  principles,  and  that  we 
must  ever  apply  them  only  to  things  as  objects  of  a  possible  ex- 
perience, and  never  to  things  in  themselves ;  for  the  conception 
without  an  object  is  an  empty  form,  but  the  object  cannot  be 
given  to  the  conception  except  in  intuition,  and  the  pure  intuition 
of  space  and  time  needs  to  be  filled  by  experience.  Hence,  with- 
out reference  to  human  experience,  these  apriori  conceptions  and 
principles  are  nothing  but  a  sporting  of  the  imagination  and  the 
understanding,  with  their  representations.  Their  peculiar  deter- 
mination is  only  to  enable  us  to  spell  perceptions,  that  we  may 
read  them  as  experiences.  But  here  one  is  apt  to  fall  into  a  delu- 
sion, which  can  hardly  be  avoided.  Since  the  categories  are  not 
grounded  upon  the  sensory,  but  have  an  apriori  origin,  it  would 
seem  as  though  their  application  would  reach  far  beyond  the 
sense ;  but  such  a  view  is  a  delusion ;  our  conceptions  are  not 
able  to  lead  us  to  a  knowledge  of  things  in  themselves  (noumena), 
since  our  intuition  gives  us  only  phenomena  for  the  content  of 
our  conceptions,  and  the  thing  in  itself  can  never  be  given  in  a 
possible  experience ;  our  knowledge  remains  limited  to  the  phe- 
nomena.   The  source  of  all  the  confusions  and  errors  and  strife 


246 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


in  previous  metaphysics,  was  in  confounding  the  phenomenal  with 
the  noumenal  world. 

Besides  the  categories  or  conceptions  of  the  understanding, 
which  have  been  considered,  and  which  are  especially  important  for 
experience,  though  often  applied  erroneously  beyond  the  province 
of  experience,  there  are  other  conceptions  "v^hose  peculiar  province 
is  only  to  deceive ;  conceptions  whose  express  determination  is  to 
pass  beyond  the  province  of  experience,  and  which  may  conse- 
quently be  called  transcendent.  These  are  the  fundamental  con- 
ceptions and  principles  of  the  previous  metaphysics.  To  examine 
these  conceptions,  and  destroy  the  appearance  of  objective  science 
and  knowledge,  which  they  falsely  exhibit,  is  the  problem  of  the 
Transcendental  Dialectics  (the  second  part  of  the  transcendental 
logic). 

3.  The  Transcendental  Dialectics. — In  a  strict  sense, 
the  reason  is  distinguished  from  the  understanding.  As  the  un- 
derstanding has  its  categories,  the  reason  has  its  ideas ;  as  the 
understanding  forms  fundamental  maxims  from  conceptions,  the 
reason  forms  principles  from  ideas,  in  which  the  maxims  of  the 
understanding  have  their  highest  confirmation.  The  peculiar 
work  of  the  reason  is,  in  general,  to  find  the  unconditioned  for  the 
conditioned  knowledge  of  the  understanding,  and  to  unify  it. 
Hence  the  reason  is  the  faculty  of  the  unconditioned,  or  of  prin- 
ciples ;  but  since  it  has  no  immediate  reference  to  objects,  but 
only  to  the  understanding  and  its  judgments,  its  activity  must  re- 
main an  immanent  one.  If  it  would  take  the  highest  unity  of 
the  reason  not  simply  in  a  transcendental  sense,  but  exalt  it  to  an 
actual  object  of  knowledge,  then  it  would  become  transcendent  in 
that  it  applied  the  conceptions  of  the  understanding  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  unconditioned.  From  this  transcending  and 
false  use  of  the  categories,  arises  the  transcendental  appearance 
which  decoys  us  beyond  experience,  by  the  delusive  pretext  of 
widening  the  domain  of  the  pure  understanding.  It  is  the  prob- 
lem of  the  transcendental  logic  to  discover  this  transcendental 
appearance. 

The  speculative'  ideas  of  the-  reason,  derived  from  the  three 


KANT. 


247 


kinds  of  logical  conclusion,  the  categorical,  the  hypothetical,  and 
the  disjunctive,  are  threefold. 

(1.)  The  psychological  idea,  the  idea  of  the  soul,  as  a  thinking 
substance  (the  object  hitherto  of  rational  psychology). 

(2.)  The  cosmological  idea,  the  idea  of  the  world  as  including 
all  phenomena  (the  object  hitherto  of  cosmology). 

(3.)  The  theological  idea,  the  idea  of  Grod  as  the  highest  con- 
dition of  the  possibility  of  all  things  (the  object  hitherto  of  rational 
theology). 

But  with  these  ideas,  in  which  the  reason  attempts  to  appl} 
the  categories  of  the  understanding  to  the  unconditioned,  the 
reason  becomes  unavoidably  entangled  in  a  semblance  and  an 
illusion.  This  transcendental  semblance,  or  this  optical  illusion 
of  the  reason,  exhibits  itself  differently  in  each  of  the  different 
ideas.  With  the  psychological  ideas  the  reason  perpetrates  a 
simple  paralogism,  while  with  the  cosmological  it  finds  itself 
driven  to  contradictory  affirmations  or  antinomies,  and,  with  the 
theological,  it  wanders  about  in  an  empty  ideal. 

(1.)  The  psychologicalideasj  or  ihe  paralogisms  of  the  pure 
reason. 

Kant  has  attempted,  under  this  rubric,  to  overthrow  all 
rational  psychology  as  this  had  been  previously  apprehended. 
E/ational  psychology  has  considered  the  soul  as  a  thing  called  by 
that  name  with  the  attribute  of  immateriality,  as  a  simple  sub- 
stance with  the  attribute  of  incorruptibility,  as  a  numerically 
identical,  intellectual  substance  with  the  predicate  of  personality, 
as  an  unextended  and  thinking  being  with  the  predicate  of  im- 
mortality. All  these  principles  of  rational  psychology,  says 
Kant,  are  surreptitious ;  they  are  all  derived  from  the  one  pre- 
mise, "  I  think;  "  but  this  premise  is  neither  intuition  nor  con- 
ception, but  a  simple  consciousness,  an  act  of  the  mind  which 
attends,  connects,  and  bears  in  itself  all  representations  and  con- 
ceptions. This  thinking  is  now  falsely  taken  as  a  real  thing ;  the 
being  of  the  Ego  as  object  is  connected  with  the  Ego  as  subject, 
and  that  which  is  affirmed  analytically  of  the  latter  is  predicated 
synthetically  of  the  former.    But  in  order  to  treat  the  Ego  also 


248 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


as  object,  and  to  be  able  to  apply  to  it  categories,  it  must  be  given 
empirically,  in  an  intuition,  which  is  not  the  case.  From  all  this 
it  follows  that  the  proofs  for  immortality  rest  upon  false  con- 
clusions. I  can,  indeed,  separate  my  pure  thinking  ideally  from 
the  body ;  but  obviously,  it  does  not  follow  from  this  that  my 
thinking  can  exist  really  when  separate  from  the  body.  The 
result  which  Kant  derives  from  his  critick  of  rational  psychology 
is  this,  viz.,  there  is  no  rational  psychology  as  a  doctrine  which 
can  furnish  us  with  any  addition  to  our  self-knowledge,  but  only 
as  a  discipline^  which  places  impassable  limits  to  the  speculative 
reason  in  this  field,  in  order  that  it  may  neither  throw  itself  into 
the  bosom  of  a  soulless  materialism,  nor  lose  itself  in  the  delusion 
of  a  groundless  spiritualism.  In  this  respect  rational  psychology 
would  rather  remind  us,  that  this  refusal  of  our  reason  to  give  a 
satisfactory  answer  to  the  questions  which  stretch  beyond  this  life, 
should  be  regarded  as  an  intimation  of  the  reason  for  us  to  leave 
this  fruitless  and  superfluous  speculation,  and  apply  our  self- 
knowledge  to  some  fruitful  and  practical  use, 
(2.)  The  Antinomies  of  Cosmology. 

The  cosmological  ideas  cannot  be  fully  attained  without  the 
aid  of  the  categories.  (1)  So  far  as  the  quantity  of  the  world  is 
concerned,  space  and  time  are  the  original  quanta  of  all  intuition. 
In  a  quantitative  respect,  therefore,  the  cosmological  idea  must 
hold  fast  to  something  concerning  the  totality  of  the  times  and 
spaces  of  the  world.  (2)  In  respect  of  quality,  the  divisibility  of 
matter  must  be  regarded.  (3)  In  respect  of  relation,  the  com- 
plete series  of  causes  must  be  sought  for  the  existing  effects  in 
the  world.  (4)  In  respect  of  modality,  the  accidental  acording  to 
its  conditions,  or  the  complete  dependence  of  the  accidental  in  the 
phenomenon  must  be  conceived.  When,  now,  the  reason  attempts 
to  establish  determinations  respecting  these  problems,  it  finds 
itself  at  once  entangled  in  a  contradiction  with  itself.  Directly 
contrary  affirmations  can  be  made  with  equal  validity  in  reference 
to  each  of  these  four  points.  We  can  show,  upon  grounds  equally 
valid,  (1)  the  thesis,  the  world  has  a  beginning  in  time  and  limits 
in  space ;  and  the  antithesis^  the  world  has  neither  beginning  in 


KANT. 


249 


time  nor  limit  in  space.  (2)  The  thesis :  every  compound  sub- 
stance in  the  world  consists  of  simple  parts,  and  there  exists 
nothing  else  than  the  simple  and  that  which  it  composes ;  and  the 
antithesis :  no  compound  thing  consists  of  simple  parts,  and  there 
exists  nothing  simple  in  the  world.  (3)  The  thesis:  causality 
according  to  the  laws  of  nature,  is  not  the  only  one  from  which 
the  phenomena  of  the  world  may  be  deduced,  but  these  may  be 
explained  through  a  causality  in  freedom;  and  the  antithesis: 
there  is  no  freedom,  but  every  thing  in  the  world  happens  only 
according  to  natural  laws.  Lastly,  (4)  the  thesis :  something  be 
longs  to  the  world  either  as  its  part  or  its  cause,  which  is  an  ab- 
solutely necessary  being ;  and  the  antithesis :  there  exists  no 
absolutely  necessary  being  as  cause  of  the  world,  either  in  the 
world  or  without  it.  From  this  dialectic  conflict  of  the  cosmo- 
logical  ideas,  there  follows  at  once  the  worthlessness  of  the  whole 
struggle. 

(3.)  The  ideal  of  the  'pure  Beason  or  the  idea  of  God. 

Kant  shows  at  first  how  the  reason  comes  to  the  idea  of  a 
most  real  being,  and  then  turns  himself  against  the  efforts  of  pre- 
vious metaphysics  to  prove  its  valid  existence.  His  critick  of  the 
arguments  employed  to  prove  the  existence  of  a  God,  is  essential- 
ly the  following. 

(a.)  The  Ontological proof  . — The  argument  here  is  as  follows  : 
it  is  possible  that  there  is  a  most  real  being ;  now  existence  is  im- 
plied in  the  conception  of  all  reality,  and  hence,  existence  neces- 
sarily belongs  to  the  conception  of  the  most  real  being.  But, 
answers  Kant,  existence  is  not  at  all  a  reality,  or  real  predicate 
which  can  be  added  to  the  conception  of  a  thing,  but  it  is  the  posi- 
tion of  a  thing  with  all  its  properties.  A  thing,  however,  may 
lose  its  existence,  and  still  be  deprived  of  none  of  its  properties. 
Hence  if  it  have  any  property,  it  does  not  at  all  follow  that  it  pos- 
sesses existence.  Being  is  nothing  but  the  logical  copula,  which 
does  not  in  the  least  enlarge  the  content  of  the  subject.  A  hun- 
dred actual  dollars,  e.  g.  contain  no  more  than  a  hundred  possible 
ones ;  there  is  only  a  difference  between  them  in  reference  to  my 
own  wealth.  Thus  the  most  real  being  may  with  perfect 
11* 


250 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


propriety  be  conceived  of  as  the  most  real,  while  at  the  same  time 
it  should  only  be  conceived  of  as  possible,  and  not  as  actual.  It 
was  therefore  wholly  unnatural,  and  a  simple  play  of  school  wit, 
to  take  an  idea  which  had  been  arbitrarily  formed,  and  deduce 
from  it  the  existence  of  its  corresponding  object.  Any  effort  and 
toil  which  might  be  spent  upon  this  famous  proof  is  thus  only 
thrown  away,  and  a  man.  would  become  no  richer  in  knowledge 
out  of  simple  ideas  than  a  merchant  would  increase  his  property 
by  adding  a  number  of  ciphers  to  the  balance  of  his  accounts. 

(h.)  The  Cosmological  proof . — This,  like  the  ontological,  in- 
fers the  existence  of  an  absolute  being  from  the  necessity  of  ex- 
istence. If  any  thing  exist  there  must  also  exist  an  absolutely 
necessary  being  as  its  cause.  But  now  there  exists  at  least  I  my- 
self, and  there  must  hence  also  exist  an  absolutely  necessary  being 
as  my  cause.  The  last  cosmological  antinomy  is  here  brought  in 
to  criticise  the  argument  at  this  stage.  The  conclusion  is  errone- 
ous, because  from  the  phenomenal  and  the  accidental  a  necessary 
being  above  experience  is  inferred.  Moreover,  if  we  allow  the 
conclusion  to  be  valid,  it  is  still  no  Grod  which  it  gives  us. 
Hence  the  farther  inference  is  made :  that  being  can  alone  be 
necessary  which  includes  all  reality  within  itself.  If  now  this 
proposition  should  be  reversed,  and  the  affirmation  made  that  that 
being  which  includes  all  reality  is  absolutely  necessary,  then  have 
we  again  the  ontological  proof,  and  the  cosmological  falls  with  this. 
In  the  cosmological  proof,  the  reast>n  uses  the  trick  of  bringing 
forth  as  a  new  argument  an  old  one  with  a  changed  dress,  that  it 
might  seem  to  have  the  power  of  summoning  two  witnesses. 

(c.)  The  Physico-theological  proof. — If  thus  neither  concep- 
tion nor  experience  can  furnish  a  proof  for  the  divine  existence, 
there  still  remains  a  third  attempt,  viz.,  to  start  from  a  determi- 
nate experienc,  and  endeavor  to  see  whether  the  existence  of  a 
supreme  being  can  not  be  inferred  from  the  arrangement  and 
condition  of  things  in  the  world.  Such  is  the  physico-theological 
proof,  which  starts  from  the  evidences  of  design  in  nature,  and 
directs  its  argument  as  follows  :  there  is  evidently  design  in  the 
universe  \  this  is  extraneous  to  the  things  of  the  world,  and  ad- 


KANT. 


251 


heres  to  them  only  contingently ;  there  exists  therefore  a  neces- 
sary cause  of  this  design  which  works  with  wisdom  and  intelli- 
gence ;  this  necessary  cause  must  be  the  most  real  being ;  the  most 
real  being  has  therefore  necessary  existence. — To  this  Kant 
answers :  The  physico-theological  proof  is  the  oldest,  clearest,  and 
most  conformable  to  the  common  reason.  But  it  is  not  demon- 
stration (apodictic).  It  infers,  from  the  form  of  the  world,  a  pro- 
portionate and  sufficient  cause  of  this  form;  but  in  this  way  we  onl^ 
attain  an  originator  of  the  form  of  the  world,  and  not  an  originator 
of  its  matter,  a  world-builder,  and  not  a  world-creator.  To  help 
out  with  this  difficulty  the  cosmological  proof  is  brought  in,  and 
the  originator  of  the  form  becomes  conceived  as  the  necessary 
being  lying  at  the  ground  of  the  content.  Thus  we  have  an  ab- 
solute being  whose  perfection  corresponds  to  that  of  the  world. 
But  in  the  world  there  is  no  absolute  perfection  ;  we  have  there- 
fore only  a  very  perfect  being ;  to  get  the  most  perfect,  we  must 
revert  again  to  the  ontological  proof.  Thus  the  teleological  proof 
rests  upon  the  cosmological,  while  this  in  turn  has  its  basis  in 
the  ontological,  and  from  this  circle  the  metaphysical  modes  of 
proof  cannot  escape. 

From  these  considerations,  it  would  follow  that  the  ideal  of  a 
supreme  being  is  nothing  other  than  a  regulative  principle  of  the 
reason,  by  which  it  looks  upon  every  connection  in  the  world  as 
if  it  sprang  from  an  all-sufficient  and  necessary  cause ;  in  order 
that,  in  explaining  this  connection,  it  may  establish  the  rule  of  a 
systematic  and  necessary  unity,  it  being  also  true  that  in  this  pro- 
cess the  reason  through  a  transcendental  subreption  cannot  avoid 
representing  to  itself  this  formal  principle  as  constitutive,  and 
this  unity  as  personal.  But  in  truth  this  supreme  being  remains 
for  the  simply  speculative  use  of  the  reason,  a  mere  but  faultless 
ideal,  a  conception  which  is  the  summit  and  the  crown  of  the 
whole  human  knowledge,  whose  objective  reality,  though  it  cannot 
be  proved  with  apodictic  certainty,  can  just  as  little  be  dis- 
proved. 

With  this  critick  of  the  ideas  of  the  reason  there  is  still  an- 
other qi^estion.    If  these  ideas  have  no  objective  significance,  why 


252 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


are  they  found  within  us  ?  Since  they  are  necessary,  they  will 
doubtless  have  some  good  purpose  to  subserve.  What  this  pur- 
pose is,  has  already  been  indicated  in  speaking  of  the  theological 
idea.  Though  not  constitutive,  yet  are  they  regulative  principles. 
"VVe  cannot  better  order  the  faculties  of  our  soul,  than  by  acting 
"  as  i]/"  there  were  a  soul.  The  cosmological  idea  leads  us  to 
consider  the  world  "asi/"  the  series  of  causes  were  infinite, 
without,  however,  excluding  an  intelligent  cause.  The  theologi- 
cal idea  enables  us  to  look  upon  the  world  in  all  its  complexity, 
as  a  regulated  unity.  Thus,  while  these  ideas  of  the  reason  are 
not  constitutive  principles,  by  means  of  which  our  knowledge 
could  be  widened  beyond  experience,  they  are  regulative  princi- 
ples, by  means  of  which  our  experience  may  be  ordered,  and 
brought  under  certain  hypothetical  unities.  These  three  ideas, 
therefore,  the  psychological,  the  cosmological,  and  the  theological, 
do  not  form  an  organon  for  the  discovery  of  truth,  but  only  a  ca- 
non for  the  simplification  and  systematizing  of  our  experiences. 

Besides  their  regulative  significance,  these  ideas  of  the  reason 
have  also  a  practical  importance.  There  is  a  sufficient  certainty, 
not  objective,  but  subjective,  which  is  especially  of  a  practical 
nature,  and  is  called  belief  or  confidence.  If  the  freedom  of  the 
will,  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  the  existence  of  a  God,  are 
three  cardinal  principles,  which,  though  not  in  afiy  way  contribu- 
ting to  our  knowledge,  are  yet  pressed  continually  upon  us  by  the 
reason,  this  difficulty  is  removed  in  the  practical  field  where  these 
ideas  have  their  peculiar  significance  for  the  moral  confidence. 
This  confidence  is  not  logical,  but  moral  certainty.  Since  it  rests 
wholly  upon  subjective  grounds,  upon  the  moral  character,  I  can- 
not say  it  is  morally  certain  that  there  is  a  Grod,  but  only  I  am 
morally  certain,  &c.  That  is,  the  belief  in  a  Grod  and  in  another 
world  is  so  interwoven  with  my  moral  character,  that  I  am  in  just 
as  much  danger  of  losing  this  character  as  of  being  deprived  of 
this  belief.  "We  are  thus  brought  to  the  basis  of  the  Practical 
Reason. 

II.  Critick  of  the  Practical  Reason. — With  the  Critick  of 
the  Practical  Reason,  we  enter  a  wholly  different  world,  where 


KANT. 


253 


the  reason  richly  recovers  that  of  which  it  was  deprived  in  tha 
theoretical  province.  The  essential  problem  of  the  Critick  of  the 
Practical  Keason  is  almost  diametrically  different  from  that  of  the 
critick  of  the  theoretical  reason.  The  object  of  investigation  in 
the  critick  of  the  speculative  reason,  was, — how  can  the  pure 
reason  know  objects  apriori;  in  the  practical  reason  it  is, — how 
can  the  pure  reason  determine  apriori  the  will  in  respect  of  ob- 
jects. The  critick  of  the  speculative  reason  inquired  after  the 
cognizableness  of  objects  apriori :  the  practical  reason  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  cognizableness  of  objects,  but  only  with  the  de- 
termination of  the  will.  Hence,  in  the  latter  critick,  we  have  an 
order  directly  the  reverse  of  that  which  we  find  in  the  former. 
As  the  original  determinations  of  our  theoretical  knowledge  are 
intuitions,  so  the  original  determinations  of  our  will  are  principles 
and  conceptions.  The  critick  of  the  practical  reason  must,  there- 
fore, start  from  moral  principles,  and  only  after  these  are  firmly 
fixed,  may  we  inquire  concerning  the  relation  in  which  the  prac- 
tical reason  stands  to  the  sensory. 

Freedom,  says  Kant,  is  given  to  us  apriori  as  an  inner  fact,  it 
is  a  fact  of  the  inner  experience.  While,  therefore,  the  reason  in 
the  theoretical  field  had  only  a  negative  result,  because,  when  it 
would  attain  to  a  true  thing  in  itself  it  became  transcendent,  yet 
now  in  the  practical  province  it  becomes  positive  through  the  idea 
of  freedom,  because  with  the  fact  of  freedom  we  have  no  need 
to  go  out  beyond  ourselves,  but  possess  a  principle  immanent  to 
the  reason.  But  why  then  give  a  critick  of  practical  reason  ?  In 
order  to  determine  the  relation  of  freedom  to  the  sensory.  Since 
the  free  will  works  through  its  acts  upon  the  sensory,  there  must 
be  a  point  of  contact  between  the  two.  This  is  found  in  the  sen- 
suous motives  of  the  will,  which  exist  implanted  in  it  by  nature,  in 
the  impulses  and  inclinations  which,  as  the  principle  of  the  empiric 
in  opposition  to  the  free  or  pure  will,  bear  in  themselves  the  char- 
acter of  a  want  of  freedom.  Since,  then,  freedom  cannot  be 
touched,  a  critick  of  the  practical  reason  can  only  relate  to  these 
smpirical  motives,  in  the  sense  of  divesting  these  from  the  claim 
of  being  exclusively  the  motives  by  which  the  will  is  determined 


254 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


While,  therefore,  in  the  theoretical  reason  the  empirical  element 
was  immanent,  and  the  intelligible  transcendent,  the  reverse  is  the 
case  in  the  practical  reason,  since  here  the  empirical  is  trans- 
cendent, and  the  intelligible  immanent.  It  is  the  object  of  the 
Analytic  to  show  the  relation  of  these  two  momenta  of  the  will, 
and  the  highest  moral  principle  which  springs  therefrom,  while  it 
belongs  to  the  Dialectic  to  solve  the  antinomies  which  result  from 
the  contradiction  of  the  pure  and  empiric  will. 

(1.)  The  Analytic. — Freedom,  as  the  one  constituent  element 
which  shows  itself  in  the  activity  of  our  will,  is  the  simple  form 
of  our  actions.  The  universal  law  binding  the  will,  is  that  it 
should  determine  itself  purely  from  itself,  independently  of  every 
external  incitement.  This  capacity  of  self-lawgiving,  or  self-de- 
termining, Kant  calls  the  autonomy  of  the  will.  The  free  auton- 
omic will  says  to  man  :  thou  oughtest !  and  since  this  moral  ought 
commands  to  an  unconditioned  obedience,  the  moral  imperative  is 
a  categorical  imperative.  What  is  it  now  which  is  categorically 
commanded  by  the  practical  reason  ?  To  answer  this  question, 
we  must  first  consider  the  empirical  will,  i.  e.  the  nature-side  of 
man. 

The  empirical,  as  the  other  constituent  element  of  our  will, 
first  produces  a  definite  deed  when  it  has  filled  the  empty  form 
of  action  with  the  matter  of  action.  The  matter  of  the  will  is 
furnished  by  the  sensory  in  the  desire  of  pleasure  and  the  dread 
of  pain.  Since  this  second  principle  of  our  actions  does  not  find 
its  seat  in  the  freedom  of  the  will  as  the  higher  faculty  of  desire, 
but  in  the  sensory,  as  the  lower  faculty  of  desire,  and  a  foreign 
law  is  thus  laid  upon  the  will, — Kant  calls  it,  in  opposition  to  the 
autonomy  of  the  reason,  the  Jieteronomy  of  the  will. 

The  categorical  imperative  is  the  necessary  law  of  freedom 
binding  upon  all  men,  and  is  distinguished  from  material  motives, 
in  that  the  latter  have  no  fixed  character.  For  men  are  at  variance 
in  respect  of  pleasure  and  pain,  since  that  which  is  disagreeable 
to  one  may  seem  pleasant  to  another,  and  if  they  ever  agree,  this 
is  simply  accidental.  Consequently^  these  material  motivea  can 
never  act  the  part  of  laws  bindiog  upon  every  being,  but  each 


KANT. 


255 


subject  may  find  his  end  in  a  difierent  motive.  Such  rules  of  act- 
ing, Kant  calls  maxims  of  the  will.  He  also  censures  those 
moralists  who  have  exalted  such  maxims  as  universal  principles 
of  morality. 

Nevertheless,  these  maxims,  though  not  the  highest  principles 
of  morality,  are  yet  necessary  to  the  autonomy  of  the  will,  he- 
cause  they  alone  furnish  for  it  a  content.  It  is  only  by  uniting 
the  two  sides,  that  we  gain  the  true  principle  of  morality.  To 
this  end  the  maxims  of  acting  must  be  freed  from  their  limitation, 
and  widened  to  the  form  of  universal  laws  of  the  reason.  Only  those 
maxims  should  be  chosen  as  motives  of  action  which  are  capable 
of  becoming  universal  laws  of  the  reason.  The  highest  jjrincijple 
of  moraliiy  will  therefore  be  this :  act  so  that  the  maxims  of 
thy  will  can  at  the  same  time  be  valid  as  the  principle  of  a  uni- 
versal lawgiving,  i.  e.  that  no  contradiction  shall  arise  in  the 
attempt  to  conceive  the  maxims  of  thy  acting  as  a  law  universally 
obeyed.  Through  this  formal  moral  principle  all  material  moral 
principles  which  can  only  be  of  a  heteronomic  nature,  are  ex- 
cluded. 

The  question  next  arises — what  impels  the  will  to  act  con- 
formably to  this  highest  moral  law  ?  Kant  answers  :  the  moral 
law  itself,  apprehended  and  revered,  must  be  the  only  moving- 
spring  of  the  human  will.  If  an  act  which  in  itself  might  be 
conformable  to  the  moral  law,  be  done  only  through  some  impulse 
to  hippiness  arising  simply  from  an  inclination  of  the  sense,  if  it 
be  not  done  purely  for  the  sake  of  the  law,  then  have  we  simply 
legality  and  not  morality.  That  which  is  included  in  every  in- 
clination of  the  sense  is  self-love  and  self-conceit,  and  of  these 
the  former  is  restricted  by  the  moral  law,  and  the  latter  wholly 
stricken  down.  But  that  which. strikes  down  our  self-conceit  and 
humbles  us  must  appear  to  us  in  the  highest  degree  worthy  of  es- 
teem. But  this  is  done  by  the  moral  law.  Consequently  the 
positive  feeling  which  we  shall  cherish  in  respect  of  the  moral 
law  will  be  reverence.  This  reverence,  though  a  feeling,  is 
neither  sensuous  nor  pathological,  for  it  stands  opposed  to  these ; 
but  is  rather  an  intellectual  feeling^  since  it  arises  from  the  notion 


256 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


of  the  practical  law  of  the  reason.  On  the  one  side  as  subor- 
dination to  law,  the  reverence  includes  pain;  on  the  other  side,  since 
the  coercion  can  only  be  exercised  through  the  proper  reason,  it 
includes  pleasure.  Reverence  is  the  single  sensation  befitting 
man  in  reference  to  the  moral  law.  Man,  as  creature  of  sense, 
cannot  rest  on  any  inner  inclination  to  the  moral  law,  for  he  has 
ever  inclinations  within  him  which  resist  the  law  ;  love  to  the  law 
can  only  be  considered  as  something  ideal. — Thus  the  moral 
purism  of  Kant,  or  his  effort  to  separate  every  impulse  of  \he 
sense  from  the  motives  to  action,  merges  into  rigorism,  or  the  dark 
view  that  duty  can  never  be  done  except  with  resistance.  A 
similar  exaggeration  belongs  to  the  well-known  epigram  of 
Schiller,  who  answers  the  following  scruple  of  conscience — 

The  friends  whom  I  love  I  gladly  Avould  serve, 

But  to  this  inclination  incites  me  ; 
And  so  I  am  forced  from  virtue  to  swerve 

Since  my  act,  through  aflfection,  delights  me — 

with  the  following  decision : 

The  friends  whom  thou  lov'st,  thou  must  first  seek  to  scorn, 

For  to  no  other  way  can  I  guide  thee  : 
'Tis  alone  with  disgust  thou  canst  rightly  perform 

The  acts  to  which  duty  would  lead  thee. 

(2.)  The  Dialectic. — The  pure  reason  has  always  its  dialectics, 
since  it  belongs  to  the  nature  of  the  reason  to  demand  the  uncon- 
ditioned for  the  given  conditioned.  Hence  also  the  practical  rea- 
son seeks  an  unconditioned  highest  good  for  that  conditioned  good 
after  which  man  strives.  What  is  this  highest  good  ?  If  we 
understand  by  the  highest  good  the  fundamental  condition  of  all 
other  goods,  then  it  is  virtue.  But  virtue  is  not  the  perfect  good, 
since  the  finite  reason  as  sensitive  stands  in  need  also  of  happi- 
ness. Hence  the  highest  good  is  only  perfect  when  the  highest 
happiness  is  joined  to  the  highest  virtue.  The  question  now 
arises  :  what  is  the  relation  of  these  two  elements  of  the  highest 
good  to  each  other  ?    Are  they  analytically  or  synthetically  con- 


KANT. 


257 


nected  together  ?  The  former  would  be  affirmed  by  most  of  the 
ancients,  especially  by  the  Greek  moral  philosophers.  We  might 
allow  with  the  Stoics,  that  happiness  is  contained  as  an  accidental 
element  in  virtue,  or,  with  the  Epicureans,  that  virtue  is  con- 
tained as  an  accidental  element  in  happiness.  The  Stoics  said  : 
to  be  conscious  of  one's  virtue  is  happiness  ;  the  Epicureans  said  : 
to  be  conscious  of  the  maxims  leading  one  to  happiness  is  virtue. 
But,  says  Kant,  an  analytic  connection  between  these  two  con- 
ceptions is  not  possible,  since  they  are  wholly  different  in  kind. 
Consequently  there  can  be  between  them  only  a  synthetic  unity, 
and  this  unity  more  closely  scanned  is  seen  to  be  a  causal  one,  so 
that  the  one  element  is  cause,  and  the  other  effect.  Such  a  rela- 
tion must  be  regarded  as  its  highest  good  by  the  practical  reason, 
whose  thesis  must  therefore  be  :  virtue  and  happiness  must  be 
bound  together  in  a  correspondent  degree  as  cause  and  effect. 
But  this  thesis  is  all  thwarted  by  the  actual  fact.  Neither  of  the 
two  is  the  direct  cause  of  the  other.  Neither  is  the  striving 
after  happiness  a  moving  spring  to  virtue,  nor  is  virtue  the 
efficient  cause  of  happiness.  Hence  the  antithesis  :  virtue  and 
happiness  do  not  necessarily  correspond,  and  are  not  universally 
connected  as  cause  and  effect.  The  critical  solution  of  this  anti- 
nomy Kant  finds  in  distinguishing  between  the  sensible  and  the 
intelligible  world.  In  the  world  of  sense,  virtue  and  happiness 
do  not,  it  is  true,  correspond  ;  but  the  reason  as  noumenon  is  also 
a  citizen  of  a  supersensible  world,  where  the  counter-strife  be- 
tween virtue  and  happiness  has  no  place.  In  this  supersensible 
world  virtue  is  always  adequate  to  happiness,  and  when  man 
passes  over  into  this  he  may  look  for  the  actualization  of  the  high- 
est good.  But  the  highest  good  has,  as  already  remarked,  two 
elements,  (1)  highest  virtue,  (2)  highest  happiness.  The  actual- 
ization demanded  for  the  first  of  these  elements  postulates  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  and  for  the  second,  the  existence  of 
God. 

{a.)  To  the  highest  good  belongs  in  the  first  place  perfect 
virtue  or  holiness.  But  no  creature  of  sense  can  be  holy  :  reason 
united  to  sense  can  only  approximate  holiness  as  an  ideal  in  an 


258 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


endless  progression.  But  sucli  an  endless  progress  is  only  pos- 
sible in  an  endless  continuance  of  personal  existence.  If,  there- 
fore, the  highest  good  shall  ever  be  actualized,  the  immortality  of 
the  soul  must  be  presupposed. 

(5.)  To  the  highest  good  belongs,  in  the  second  place,  perfect 
happiness.  Happiness  is  that  condition  of  a  rational  creature  in 
the  world,  to  whom  every  thing  goes  according  to  his  desire  and 
will.  This  can  only  occur  when  all  nature  is  in  accord  with  his 
ends.  But  this  is  not  the  case  ;  as  acting  beings  we  are  not  the 
cause  of  nature,  and  there  is  not  the  slightest  ground  in  the 
moral  law  for  connecting  morality  and  happiness.  Notwith- 
standing this,  we  ought  to  endeavor  to  secure  the  highest  good. 
It  must  therefore  be  possible.  There  is  thus  postulated  the 
necessary  connection  of  these  tv^o  elements,  i.  e.  the  existence  of 
a  cause  of  nature  distinct  from  nature,  and  which  contains  the 
ground  of  this  connection.  There  must  be  a  being  as  the  com- 
mon cause  of  the  natural  and  moral  world,  a  being  who  knows 
our  characters  of  intelligence,  and  who,  according  to  this  intelli- 
gence imparts  to  us  happiness.    Such  a  being  is  God. 

Thus  from  the  practical  reason  there  issue  the  ideas  of  im- 
mortality and  of  God,  as  we  have  already  seen  to  be  the  case 
with  the  idea  of  freedom.  The  reality  of  the  idea  of  freedom 
is  derived  from  the  possibility  of  a  moral  law ;  that  of  the  idea 
of  immortality  is  borrowed  from  the  possibility  of  a  ^perfect 
virtue ;  that  of  the  idea  of  a  God  follows  from  the  necessary 
demand  of  a  perfect  happiness.  These  three  ideas,  therefore, 
which  the  speculative  reason  has  treated  as  problems  that  could 
not  be  solved,  gain  a  firm  basis  in  the  province  of  the  practical 
reason.  Still  they  are  not  yet  theoretical  dogmas,  but  as  Kant 
calls  them  practical  postulates,  necessary  premises  of  moral  action. 
My  theoretical  knowledge  is  not  enlarged  by  them  :  I  only  know 
now  that  there  are  objects  corresponding  to  these  ideas,  but  of 
these  objects  I  can  know  no  more.  Of  God,  for  instance,  we  pos- 
sess and  know  no  more  than  this  very  conception;  and  if  we 
should  attempt  to  establish  the  theory  of  the  supersensible 
grounded  upon  such  categories,  this  would  be  to  make  theology 


KANT. 


25£ 


like  a  magic  lantern,  with  its  pliantasmagorical  representations. 
Yet  Las  the  practical  reason  acquired  for  us  a  certainty  respecting 
the  objective  reality  of  these  ideas,  which  the  theoretical  reason 
had  been  obliged  to  leave  undecided,  and  in  this  respect  the  prac- 
tical reason  has  the  primacy.  This  relation  of  the  two  faculties 
of  knowledge  is  wisely  established  in  relation  to  the  destiny  of 
men.  Since  the  ideas  of  God  and  immortality  are  theoretically 
obscure  to  us,  they  do  not  defile  our  moral  motives  by  fear  and 
hope,  but  leave  us  free  space  to  act  through  reverence  for  the 
moral  law. 

Thus  far  Kant's  Critick  of  the  Practical  Reason.  In  con- 
nection with  this  we  may  here  mention  his  vieivs  of  religion  as 
they  appear  in  his  treatise  upon  "  Religion  within  the  Bounds  of 
Pure  Beasony  The  chief  idea  of  this  treatise  is  the  referring 
of  religion  to  morality.  Between  morality  and  religion  there 
may  be  the  twofold  relation,  that  either  morality  is  founded  upon 
religion,  or  else  religion  upon  morality.  If  the  first  relation 
were  real,  it  would  give  us  fear  and  hope  as  principles  of  moral 
action ;  but  this  cannot  be,  and  we  are  therefore  left  alone  to  the 
second.  Morality  leads  necessarily  to  religion,  because  the  high- 
est good  is  a  necessary  ideal  of  the  reason,  and  this  can  only  be 
realized  through  a  God ;  but  in  no  way  may  religion  first  incite 
us  to  virtue,  for  the  idea  of  God  may  never  become  a  moral  mo- 
tive. Religion,  according  to  Kant,  is  the  recognition  of  all  our 
duties  as  divine  commands.  It  is  revealed  religion  when  I  find 
in  it  the  divine  command,  and  thus  learn  my  duty ;  it  is  natural 
religion  when  I  find  in  it  my  duty,  and  thus  learn  the  divine  com- 
mand. The  Church  is  an  ethical  community,  which  has  for  its 
end  the  fulfilment  and  the  most  perfect  exhibition  of  moral  com- 
mands,— a  union  of  those  who  with  united  energies  purpose  to 
resist  evil  and  advance  morality.  The  Church,  in  so  far  as  it  is 
no  object  of  a  possible  experience,  is  called  the  invisible  Church, 
which,  as  such,  is  a  simple  idea  of  the  union  of  all  the  righteous 
under  the  divine  moral  government  of  the  world.  The  visible 
Church,  on  the  other  hand,  is  that  which  presents  the  kingdom  of 
God  upon  earth,  so  far  as  this  can  be  attained  through  men.  The 


260 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


requisites,  and  hence  also  the  characteristics  of  the  true  visible 
Church  (which  are  divided  according  to  the  table  of  the  cate- 
gories since  this  Church  is  given  in  experience)  are  the  following  : 
(a)  In  respect  of  quantity  the  Church  must  be  total  or  unive?'- 
sal ;  and  though  it  may  be  divided  in  accidental  opinions,  yet 
must  it  be  instituted  upon  such  principles  as  will  necessarily  lead 
to  a  universal  union  in  one  single  church.  (5)  The  quality  of 
the  true  visible  Church  is  purity ^  as  a  union  under  no  other  than 
moral  motives,  since  it  is  at  the  same  time  purified  from  the 
stupidness  of  superstition  and  the  madness  of  fanaticism,  (c) 
The  relation  of  the  members  of  the  Church  to  each  other  rests 
upon  the  principle  of  freedom.  The  Church  is,  therefore,  a  free 
state,  neither  a  hierarchy  nor  a  democracy,  but  a  voluntary,  uni- 
versal, and  enduring  union  of  heart,  {d)  In  respect  of  modality 
the  Church  demands  that  its  constitution  should  not  be  changed. 
The  laws  themselves  may  not  change,  though  one  may  reserve  to 
himself  the  privilege  of  changing  some  accidental  arrangements 
which  relate  simply  to  the  administration. — That  alone  which  can 
establish  a  universal  Church  is  the  moral  faith  of  the  reason,  for 
this  alone  can  be  shared  by  the  convictions  of  every  man.  But, 
because  of  the  peculiar  weakness  of  human  nature,  we  can  never 
reckon  enough  on  this  pure  faith  to  build  a  Church  on  it  alone, 
for  men  are  not  easily  convinced  that  the  striving  after  virtue 
and  an  irreproachable  life  is  every  thing  which  God  demands : 
they  always  suppose  that  they  must  offer  to  God  a  special  service 
prescribed  by  tradition,  in  which  it  only  comes  to  this — that  he 
is  served. 

To  establish  a  Church,  we  must  therefore  have  a  statutory 
faith  historically  grounded  upon  facts.  This  is  the  so-called 
faith  of  the  Church.  In  every  Church  there  are  therefore  two 
elements — the  purely  moral,  or  the  faith  of  reason,  and  the  his- 
torico-statutory,  or  the  faith  of  the  Church.  It  depends  now  upon 
the  relation  of  the  two  elements  whether  a  Church  shall  have  any 
worth  or  not.  The  statutory  element  should  ever  be  only  the 
vehicle  of  the  moral.  Just  so  soon  as  this  element  becomes  in 
itself  an  independent  end,  claiming  an  independent  validity,  will 


KANT. 


261 


the  Church  become  corrupt  and  irrational,  and  -whenever  tht 
Church  passes  over  to  the  pure  faith  of  reason,  does  it  approx- 
imate to  the  kingdom  of  God.  Upon  this  principle  we  may  dis- 
tinguish the  true  from  the  spurious  service  of  the  kingdom  of 
God,  religion  from  priestcraft.  A  dogma  has  worth  alone  in  so 
far  as  it  has  a  moral  content.  The  apostle  Paul  himself 
would  with  difficulty  have  given  credit  to  the  dicta  of  the  faith 
of  the  Church  without  this  moral  faith.  From  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity,  e.  g.  taken  literally,  nothing  actually  practical  can  be 
derived.  Whether  we  have  to  reverence  in  the  Godhead  three 
persons  or  ten  makes  no  difference,  if  in  both  cases  we  have  the 
same  rules  for  our  conduct  of  life.  The  Bible  also,  with  its  in- 
terpretation, must  be  considered  in  a  moral  point  of  view.  The 
records  of  revelation  must  be  interpreted  in  a  sense  which  will 
harmonize  with  the  universal  rules  of  the  religion  of  reason. 
Reason  is  in  religious  things  the  highest  interpreter  of  the  Bible. 
This  interpretation  in  reference  to  some  texts  may  seem  forced, 
yet  it  must  be  preferred  to  any  such  literal  interpretation  as 
would  contain  nothing  for  morality,  or  perhaps  go  against  every 
moral  motive.  That  such  a  moral  signification  may  always  be 
found  without  ever  entirely  repudiating  the  literal  sense,  results 
from  the  fact  that  the  foundation  for  a  moral  religion  lay  origi- 
nally in  the  human  reason.  We  need  only  to  divest  the  repre- 
sentations of  the  Bible  of  their  mythical  dress  (an  attempt  which 
Kant  has  himself  made^  by  moral  explanation  of  some  of  the 
weightiest  doctrines),  in  order  to  attain  a  rational  sense  which 
shall  be  universally  valid.  The  historical  element  of  the  sacred 
books  is  in  itself  of  no  account.  The  maturer  the  reason  be- 
comes, the  more  it  can  hold  fast  for  itself  the  moral  sense,  so 
much  the  more  unnecessary  will  be  the  statutory  institutions  of 
the  faith  of  the  Church.  The  transition  of  the  faith  of  the 
Church  to  the  pure  faith  of  reason  is  the  approximation  to  the 
kingdom  of  God,  to  which,  however,  we  can  only  approach  nearer 
and  nearer  in  an  infinite  progress.  The  actual  realization  of 
the  kingdom  of  God  is  the  end  of  the  world,  the  cessation  of 
history. 


262 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


III.  Critick  of  the  Faculty  of  Judgment. — The  con- 
ception of  this  science  Kant  gives  in  the  following  manner. 
The  two  faculties  of  the  human  mind  hitherto  considered  were 
the  faculty  of  knowledge  and  that  of  desire.  It  was  proved  in 
the  Critick  of  pure  Keason,  that  the  understanding  only  as  faculty 
of  knowledge  included  constitutive  principles  apriori ;  and  it  was 
shown  in  the  Critick  of  Practical  Reason,  that  the  reason  pos- 
sesses constitutive  principles  apriori,  simply  in  reference  to  the 
faculty  of  desire.  Whether  now  the  faculty  of  judgment^  as 
the  middle  link  between  understanding  and  reason,  can  take  its 
object — the  feeling  of  pleasure  and  pain  as  the  middle  link  be- 
tween the  faculty  of  knowledge  and  that  of  desire — and  furnish 
it  apriori  with  principles  which  shall  be  for  themselves  consti- 
tutive and  not  simply  regulative :  this  is  the  point  upon  which 
the  Critick  of  the  Faculty  of  Judgment  has  to  turn. 

The  faculty  of  judgment  is  the  middle  link  between  the  un- 
derstanding as  the  faculty  of  conceptions,  and  the  reason  as  the 
faculty  of  principles.  In  this  position  it  has  the  following  func- 
tions :  The  speculative  reason  had  taught  us  to  consider  the  world 
only  according  to  natural  laws ;  the  practical  reason  had  inferred 
for  us  a  moral  world,  in  which  every  thing  is  determined  through 
freedom.  There  was  thus  a  gulf  between  the  kingdom  of  nature 
and  that  of  freedom,  which  could  not  be  passed  unless  the  faculty 
of  judgment  should  furnish  a  conception  which  should  unite  the 
two  sides.  That  it  is  entitled  to  do  this  lies  in  the  very  concep- 
tion of  the  faculty  of  judgment.  Since  it  is  the  faculty  of  con- 
ceiving the  particular  as  contained  under  the  universal,  it  thus 
refers  the  empirical  manifoldness  of  nature  to  a  supersensible, 
transcendental  principle,  which  embraces  in  itself  the  ground  for 
the  unity  of  the  manifold.  The  object  of  the  faculty  of  judg- 
ment is,  therefore,  the  conception  of  design  in  nature ;  for  the 
evidence  of  this  points  to  that  supersensible  unity  which  contains 
the  ground  for  the  actuality  of  an  object.  And  since  all  design 
and  every  actualization  of  an  end  is  connected  with  pleasure,  we 
may  farther  explain  the  faculty  of  judgment  by  saying,  that  it 
contains  the  laws  for  the  feeling  of  pleasure  and  pain. 


KANT. 


263 


The  evidence  of  design  in  nature  can  be  represented  eithei 
subjectively  or  objectively.  In  the  first  case  I  perceive  pleasure 
a,nd  pain,  immediately  through  the  representation  of  an  object, 
before  I  have  formed  a  conception  of  it ;  my  delight,  in  this  in- 
s^nce,  can  only  be  referred  to  a  designed  harmony  of  relation, 
between  the  form  of  an  object,  and  my  faculty  of  beholding. 
The  faculty  of  judgment  viewed  thus  subjectively,  is  called  the 
cEsthetic  faculty^  In  the  second  case,  I  form  to  myself  at  the 
outset,  a  conception  of  the  object,  and  then  judge  whether  the 
form  of  the  object  corresponds  to  this  conception.  In  order  to 
find  a  flower  that  is  beautiful  to  my  beholding,  I  do  not  need  to 
have  a  conception  of  the  flower ;  but,  if  I  would  see  a  design  in 
it,  then  a  conception  is  necessary.  The  faculty  of  judgment, 
viewed  as  capacity  to  judge  of  these  objective  designs,  is  called 
the  teleological  faculty. 

1.  Critick  of  the  Esthetic  Faculty  of  Judgment.  (1.) 
Analytic. — The  analytic  of  the  aesthetic  faculty  of  judgment  is 
divided  into  two  parts,  the  analytic  of  the  beautiful^  and  the  an- 
alytic of  the  sublime. 

In  order  to  discover  what  is  required  in  naming  an  object 
beautiful^  we  must  analyze  the  judgment  of  taste,  as  the  faculty 
for  deciding  upon  the  beautiful,  {a)  In  respect  of  quality,  the 
beautiful  is  the  object  of  a  pure,  uninterested  satisfaction.  This 
disinterestedness  enables  us  to  distinguish  between  the  satisfac- 
tion in  the  beautiful,  and  the  satisfaction  in  the  agreeable  and  the 
good.  In  the  agreeable  and  the  good  I  am  interested ;  my  satis- 
faction in  the  agreeable  is  connected  with  a  sensation  of  desire ; 
my  satisfaction  in  the  good  is,  at  the  same  time,  a  motive  for  my 
will  to  actualize  it.  My  satisfaction  in  the  beautiful  alone  is 
without  interest,  {b)  In  respect  of  quantity,  the  beautiful  is  that 
which  universally  pleases.  In  respect  of  the  agreeable,  every 
one  decides  that  his  satisfaction  in  it  is  only  a  personal  one ;  but 
if  any  one  should  affirm  of  a  picture,  that  it  is  beautiful,  he 
would  expect  that  not  only  he,  but  every  other  one,  would  also 
find  it  so.  Nevertheless,  this  judgment  of  the  taste  does  not 
arise  from  conceptions ;  its  universal  validity  is  therefore  purely 


264 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


subjective.  I  do  not  judge  that  all  the  objects  of  a  species  are 
beautiful,  but  only  that  a  certain  specific  object  will  appear  beau- 
tiful to  every  beholder.  All  the  judgments  of  taste  are  indi- 
vidual judgments,  (c)  In  respect  of  relation,  that  is  beautiful 
in  which  we  find  the  form  of  design,  without  representing  to  our- 
selves any  specific  design,  (d)  In  respect  of  modality,  that  is 
beautiful  which  is  recognized  without  a  conception,  as  the  object 
of  a  necessary  satisfaction.  Of  every  representation,  it  is  at  least 
possible,  that  it  may  awaken  pleasure.  The  representation  of  the 
agreeable  awakens  actual  pleasure.  The  representation  of  the 
beautiful,  on  the  other  hand,  awakens  pleasure  necessarily.  The 
necessity  which  is  conceived  in  an  aesthetic  judgment,  is  a  neces- 
sity for  determining  every  thing  by  a  judgment,  which  can  be 
viewed  as  an  example  of  a  universal  rule,  though  the  rule  itself 
cannot  be  stated.  The  subjective  principle  which  lies  at  the  basis 
of  the  judgment  of  taste,  is  therefore  a  common  sense,  which  de- 
termines what  is  pleasing,  and  what  displeasing,  only  through 
feeling,  and  not  through  conception. 

The  sublime  is  that  which  is  absolutely,  or  beyond  all  com- 
parison, great,  compared  with  which  every  thing  else  is  small. 
But  now  in  nature  there  is  nothing  which  has  no  greater.  The 
absolutely  great  is  only  the  infinite,  and  the  infinite  is  only  to  be 
met  with  in  ourselves,  as  idea.  The  sublime,  therefore,  is  not 
properly  found  in  nature,  but  is  only  carried  over  to  nature  from 
our  own  minds.  We  call  that  sublime  in  nature,  which  awakens 
within  us  the  idea  of  the  infinite.  As  in  the  beautiful  there  is 
prominent  reference  to  quality,  so,  in  the  sublime,  the  most  im- 
portant element  of  all,  is  quantity ;  and  this  quantity  is  either 
greatness  of  extension  (the  mathematically  sublime),  or  greatness 
of  power  (the  dynamically  sublime).  In  the  sublime  there  is  a 
greater  satisfaction  in  the  formless,  than  in  the  form.  The  sub- 
lime excites  a  vigorous  movement  Of  the  heart,  and  awakens 
pleasure  only  through  pain,  i.  e.  through  the  feeling  that  the 
energies  of  life  are  for  the  moment  restrained.  The  satisfaction 
in  the  sublime  is  hence  not  so  much  a  positive  pleasure,  but  rather 
an  amazement  and  awe,  which  may  be  called  a  negative  pleasure. 


KANT. 


265 


The  elements  for  an  aesthetic  judgment  of  the  sublime  are  the 
same  as  in  the  feeling  of  the  beautiful,  (a)  In  respect  of  quan- 
tity, that  is  sublime  which  is  absolutely  great,  in  comparison  with 
which  every  thing  else  is  small.  The  aesthetic  estimate  of  great- 
ness does  not  lie,  however,  in  numeration,  but  in  the  simple  in- 
tuition of  the  subject.  The  greatness  of  an  object  of  nature, 
which  the  imagination  attempts  in  vain  to  comprehend,  leads  to  a 
supersensible  substratum,  which  is  great  beyond  all  the  measures 
of  the  sense,  and  which  has  reference  properly  to  the  feeling  of 
the  sublime.  It  is  not  the  object  itself,  as  the  surging  sea,  which 
is  sublime,  but  rather  the  subject's  frame  of  mind,  in  the  estima- 
tion of  this  object,  (b)  In  respect  of  quality,  the  sublime  does 
not  awaken  pure  pleasure,  like  the  beautiful,  but  first  pain,  and 
through  this,  pleasure.  The  feeling  of  the  insufficiency  of  our 
imagination,  in  the  aesthetic  estimate  of  greatness,  gives  rise  to 
pain ;  but,  on  the  other  side,  the  consciousness  of  our  independ- 
ent reason,  for  which  the  faculty  of  imagination  is  inadequate, 
awakens  pleasure.  In  this  respect,  therefore,  that  is  sublime 
which  immediately  pleases  us,  through  its  opposition  to  the  in- 
terest of  the  sense,  (c)  In  respect  of  relation,  the  sublime  suf- 
fers nature  to  appear  as  a  power,  indeed,  but  in  reference  to 
which,  we  have  the  consciousness  of  superiority,  (d)  In  respect 
of  modality,  the  judgments  concerning  the  sublime  are  as  neces- 
sarily valid,  as  those  for  the  beautiful ;  only  with  this  difference, 
that  our  judgment  of  the  sublime  finds  an  entrance  to  some 
minds,  with  greater  difficulty  than  our  judgment  of  the  beautiful, 
since  to  perceive  the  sublime,  culture,  and  developed  moral  ideas, 
are  necessary. 

(2.)  Dialectic. — A  dialectic  of  the  aesthetic  faculty  of  judg- 
ment, like  every  dialectic,  is  only  possible  where  we  can  meet 
with  judgments  which  lay  claim  to  universality  apriori.  For  dia- 
lectics consists  in  the  opposition  of  such  judgments.  The  anti- 
nomy of  the  principles  of  taste  rests  upon  the  two  opposite  ele- 
ments of  the  judgment  of  taste,  that  it  is  purely  subjective,  and 
at  the  same  time,  lays  claim  to  universal  validity.  Hence,  the 
two  common-place  sayings  :  "  there  is  no  disputing  about  taste," 
12 


266 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


and  "  there  is  a  contest  of  taste."  From  these,  we  have  the  fol- 
lowing antinomy,  (a)  Thesis :  the  judgment  of  taste  cannot  be 
grounded  on  conception,  else  might  we  dispute  it.  (b)  Antithe- 
sis  :  the  judgment  of  taste  must  be  grounded  on  conception,  else, 
notwithstanding  its  diversity,  there  could  be  no  contest  respecting 
it. — This  antinomy,  says  Kant,  is,  however,  only  an  apparent  one, 
and  disappears  as  soon  as  the  two  propositions  are  more  accu- 
rately apprehended.  The  thesis  should  be :  the  judgment  of 
taste  is  not  grounded  upon  a  definite  conception,  and  is  not 
strictly  demonstrable  ;  the  antithesis  should  be :  this  judgment  is 
grounded  upon  a  conception,  though  an  indefinite  one,  viz.,  upon 
the  conception  of  a  supersensible  substratum  for  the  phenomenal. 
Thus  apprehended,  there  is  no  longer  any  contradiction  between 
the  two  propositions. 

In  the  conclusion  of  the  aesthetic  faculty  of  judgment,  we 
can  now  answer  the  question,  whether  the  fitness  of  things  to  our 
faculty  of  judgment  (their  beauty  and  sublimity),  lies  in  the 
things  themselves,  or  in  us  ?  The  assthetic  realism  claims  that 
the  supreme  cause  of  nature  designed  to  produce  things  which 
should  affect  our  imagination,  as  beautiful  and  sublime,  and  the 
organic  forms  of  nature  strongly  support  this  view.  But  on  the 
other  hand,  nature  exhibits  even  in  her  merely  mechanical  forms, 
such  a  tendency  to  the  beautiful,  that  we  might  believe  that  she 
could  produce  also  the  most  beautiful  organic  forms  through  me- 
chanism alone ;  and  that  thus  the  design  would  lie  not  in  nature, 
but  in  our  soul.  This  is  the  standpoint  of  idealism,  upon  which 
it  becomes  explicable  how  we  can  determine  any  thing  apriori 
concerning  beauty  and  sublimity.  But  the  highest  view  of  the 
gesthetical,  is  to  use  it  as  a  symbol  of  the  moral  good.  Thus 
Kant  makes  the  theory  of  taste,  like  religion,  to  be  a  corollary  of 
morality. 

2.  Cpjtick  of  the  Teleological  Faculty  of  Judgment. — In 
the  foregoing,  we  have  considered  the  subjective  sssthetical  design 
in  the  objects  of  nature.  But  the  objects  of  nature  have  also  a 
relation  of  design  to  each  other.  The  teleological  faculty  of 
judgment  has  also  to  consider  this  faculty  of  design. 


KANT. 


267 


(1.)  Analytic  of  the  Teleological  Faculty  of  Judgment. — The 
analytic  has  to  determine  the  kinds  of  objective  design.  Objec- 
tive, material  design,  is  of  two  kinds,  external,  and  internal.  The 
external  design  is  only  relative,  since  it  simply  indicates  a  useful- 
ness of  one  thing  for  another.  Sand,  for  instance,  which  borders 
the  sea  shore,  is  of  use  in  bearing  pine  forests.  In  order  that 
animals  can  live  upon  the  earth,  the  earth  must  produce  nourish- 
ment for  them,  etc.  These  examples  of  external  design,  show 
that  here  the  design  never  belongs  to  the  means  in  itself,  but  only 
accidentally.  We  should  never  get  a  conception  of  the  sand  by 
saying  that  it  is  a  means  for  pine  forests ;  it  is  conceivable  for  it- 
self, without  any  reference  to  the  conception  of  design.  The 
earth  does  not  produce  nourishment,  because  it  is  necessary  that 
men  should  dwell  upon  it.  In  brief,  this  external  or  relative  de- 
sign may  be  conceived  from  the  mechanism  of  nature  alone. 
Not  so  the  inner  design  of  nature,  which  shows  itself  prominently 
in  the  organic  products  of  nature.  In  an  organic  product  of  na- 
ture, every  one  of  its  parts  is  end,  and  every  one,  means  or  in- 
strument. In  the  process  of  generation,  the  natural  product  ap- 
pears as  species,  in  growth  it  appears  as  individual,  and  in  the 
process  of  complete  formation,  every  part  of  the  individual  shows 
itself.  This  natural  organism  cannot  be  explained  from  mechani- 
cal causes,  but  only  through  final  causes,  or  teleologically. 

(2.)  Dialectic. — The  dialectic  of  the  teleological  faculty  of 
judgment,  has  to  adjust  this  opposition  between  this  mechanism 
of  nature  and  teleology.  On  the  one  side  we  have  the  thesis  : 
every  production  of  material  things  must  be  judged  as  possible, 
according  to  simple  mechanical  laws.  On  the  other  side  we  have 
the  antithesis :  certain  products  of  material  nature  cannot  be 
judged  as  possible,  according  to  simple  mechanical  laws,  but  de- 
mand the  conception  of  design  for  their  explanation.  If  these 
two  maxims  are  posited  as  constitutive  (objective)  principles  for 
the  possibility  of  the  objects  themselves,  then  do  they  contradict 
each  other,  but  as  simply  regulative  (subjective)  principles  for 
the  investigation  of  nature,  they  are  not  contradictory.  Earlier 
systems  treated  the  conception  of  design  in  nature  dogmatically, 


268 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


and  either  affirmed  or  denied  its  essential  existence  in  nature. 
But  we,  convinced  that  teleology  is  only  a  regulative  principle, 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  question  whether  an  inner  design  be- 
longs essentially  to  nature  or  not,  but  we  only  affirm  that  our 
faculty  of  judgment  must  look  upon  nature  as  designed.  We 
envisage  the  conception  of  design  in  nature,  but  leave  it  wholly 
undecided  whether  to  another  understanding,  which  does  not 
think  discursively  like  ours,  nature  may  not  be  understood,  with- 
out at  all  needing  to  bring  in  this  conception  of  design.  Our  un- 
derstanding thinks  discursively  :  it  proceeds  frcm  the  parts,  and 
comprehends  the  whole  as  the  product  of  its  parts ;  it  cannot, 
therefore,  conceive  the  organic  products  of  nature,  where  the 
whole  is  the  ground  and  the  prius  of  the  parts,  except  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  conception  of  design.  If  there  were,  on  the 
other  hand,  an  intuitive  understanding,  which  could  know  the 
particular  and  the  parts  as  co- determined  in  the  universal  and 
the  whole ;  such  an  understanding  might  conceive  the  whole  of 
nature  out  of  one  principle,  and  would  not  need  the  conception 
of  end. 

If  Kant  had  thoroughly  carried  out  this  conception  of  an  in- 
tuitive understanding  as  well  as  the  conception  of  an  immanent 
design  in  nature,  he  would  have  overcome,  in  principle,  the  stand- 
point of  subjective  idealism,  which  he  made  numerous  attempts,  in 
his  critick  of  the  faculty  of  judgment,  to  break  through  ;  but  these 
ideas  he  only  propounded,  and  left  them  to  be  positively  carried 
out  by  his  successors. 


SECTION  XXXIX. 

TRANSITION  TO  THE  POST-KANTIAN  PHILOSOPHY. 

The  Kantian  philosophy  soon  gained  in  Germany  an  almost 
undisputed  rule.  The  imposing  boldness  of  its  standpoint,  the 
novelty  of  its  results,  the  applicability  of  its  principles,  the  moral 


TRANSITION  TO  THE  POST-KANTIAN  PHILOSOPHY.  269 


severity  of  its  view  of  the  world,  and  above  all,  the  spirit  of  free- 
dom and  moral  autonomy  which  appeared  in  it,  and  which  was  so 
directly  counter  to  the  efforts  of  that  age,  gained  for  it  an  assent 
as  enthusiastic  as  it  was  extended.  It  aroused  among  all  culti- 
vated classes  a  wider  interest  and  participation  in  philosophic 
pursuits,  than  had  ever  appeared  in  an  equal  degree  among  any 
people.  In  a  short  time  it  had  drawn  to  itself  a  very  numerous 
school :  there  were  soon  few  German  universities  in  which  it  had 
not  had  its  talented  representatives,  while  in  every  department  of 
science  and  literature,  especially  in  theology  (it  is  the  parent  of 
theological  rationalism),  and  in  natural  rights,  as  also  in  helles- 
lettres  [Schiller)  ^  it  began  to  exert  its  influence.  Yet  most  of  the 
writers  who  appeared  in  the  Kantian  school,  confined  themselves 
to  an  exposition  or  popular  application  of  the  doctrine  as  Kant 
had  given  it,  and  even  the  most  talented  and  independent  amon^ 
the  defenders  and  improvers  of  the  critical  philosophy  [e.  g 
Reinhold,  1758-1823  ;  Bardili,  1761-1808  ;  Scliulze,  Beck, 
Fries,  Krug,  Bouterwech),  only  attempted  to  give  a  firmer  basis 
to  the  Kantian  philosophy  as  they  had  received  it,  to  obviate 
some  of  its  wants  and  deficiencies,  and  to  carry  out  the  standpoint 
of  transcendental  idealism  more  purely  and  consistently.  Among 
those  who  carried  out  the  Kantian  philosophy,  only  two  men, 
FicTite  and  Herhart,  can  be  named,  who  made  by  their  actual 
advance  an  epoch  in  philosophy ;  and  among  its  opposers  [e.  g. 
Hamann,  Herder),  only  one,  Jacohi,  is  of  philosophic  importance. 
These  three  philosophers  are  hence  the  first  objects  for  us  to  con- 
sider. In  order  to  a  more  accurate  development  of  their  princi- 
ples, we  preface  a  brief  and  general  characteristic  of  their  relation 
to  the  Kantian  philosophy. 

1.  Dogmatism  had  been  critically  annihilated  by  Kant ;  his 
Critick  of  pure  Reason  had  for  its  result  the  theoretical  inde- 
monstrableness  of  the  three  ideas  of  the  reason,  Grod,  freedom,  and 
immortality.  True,  these  ideas  which,  from  the  standpoint  of 
theoretical  knowledge,  had  been  thrust  out,  Kant  had  introduced 
again  as  postulates  of  the  practical  reason  ;  but  as  postulates,  as 
only  practical  premises,  they  possess  no  theoretic  certainty,  and 


270 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


remain  exposed  to  doubt.  In  order  to  do  away  with  this  uncer- 
tainty, and  this  despairing  of  knowledge  which  had  seemed  to  he 
the  end  of  the  Kantian  philosophy,  Jacohi,  a  younger  cotempo- 
rary  of  Kant,  placed  himself  upon  the  standpoint  of  the  faith 
philosophy  in  opposition  to  the  standpoint  of  criticism.  Though 
these  highest  ideas  of  the  reason,  the  eternal  and  the  divine,  can- 
not be  reached  and  proved  by  means  of  demonstration,  yet  is  it 
the  very  essence  of  the  divine  that  it  is  indemonstrable  and  unat- 
tainable for  the  understanding.  In  order  to  be  certain  of  the 
highest,  of  that  which  lies  beyond  the  understanding,  there  is  only 
one  organ,  viz.,  feeling.  In  feeling,  therefore,  in  immediate  know- 
ledge, in  faith,  Jacobi  thought  he  had  found  that  certainty  which 
Kant  had  sought  in  vain  on  the  basis  of  discursive  thinking. 

2.  While  Jacobi  stood  in  an  antithetic  relation  to  the  Kan- 
tian philosophy,  Fichte  appears  as  its  immediate  consequence. 
Fichte  carried  out  to  its  consequence  the  Kantian  dualism,  ac- 
cording to  which  the  Ego,  as  theoretic,  is  subjected  to  the  external 
world,  while  as  practical,  it  is  its  master,  or,  in  other  words,  ac- 
cording to  which  the  Ego  stands  related  to  the  objective  world, 
now  receptively  and  again  spontaneously.  He  allowed  the  reason 
to  be  exclusively  practical,  as  will  alone,  and  spontaneity  alone, 
and  apprehended  its  theoretical  and  receptive  relation  to  the  ob- 
jective world  as  only  a  cu'cumscribed  activity,  as  a  limitation 
prescribed  to  itself  by  the  reason.  But  for  the  reason,  so  far  as 
it  is  practical,  there  is  nothing  objective  except  as  it  is  produced. 
The  will  knows  no  being  but  only  an  ought.  Hence  the  objec- 
tive being  of  truth  is  universally  denied,  and  the  thing  which  is 
essentially  unknown  must  fall  away  of  itself  as  an  empty  shadow. 

Every  thing  which  is,  is  the  Ego,"  is  the  principle  of  the 
Fichtian  system,  and  represents  at  the  same  time  the  subjective 
idealism  in  its  consequence  and  completion. 

3.  While  the  subjective  idealism  of  Fichte  was  carried  out  in 
the  objective  idealism  of  Schelling,  and  the  absolute  idealism  of 
Hegel,  there  arose  cotemporaneously  with  these  systems  a  third 
offshoot  of  the  Kantian  criticism,  viz.,  the  philosophy  of  Herhart. 
It  had  its  subjective  origin  in  the  Kantian  philosophy,  but  its  ob- 


JACOBI. 


271 


jective  and  historic  connection  with  Kant  is  slight.  It  breaks  up 
all  historic  continuity,  and  holds  an  isolated  position  in  the  histo- 
ry of  philosophy.  Its  general  basis  is  Kantian,  in  so  far  as  it 
makes  for  its  problem  a  critical  investigation  of  the  subjective 
experience.    We  place  it  between  Fichte  and  Schelling. 


SECTION  XL. 

JACOBI. 

Friedrich  Heinrich  Jacobi  was  born  at  Diisseldorf  in  1743. 
His  father  destined  him  for  a  merchant.  After  he  had  studied 
in  Geneva  and  become  interested  in  philosophy,  he  entered  his 
father's  mercantile  establishment,  but  afterwards  abandoned  this 
business,  having  been  made  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  and 
customs  commissioner  for  Cleves  and  Berg,  and  also  privy 
councillor  at  Diisseldorf.  In  this  city,  or  at  his  neighboring 
estate  of  Pempelfort,  he  spent  a  great  part  of  his  life  devoted  to 
philosophy  and  his  friends.  In  the  year  1804  he  was  called  to 
the  newly-formed  Academy  of  Sciences  in  Munich.  In  1807  he 
was  chosen  president  of  this  institution,  a  post  which  he  filled 
till  his  death  in  1819.  Jacobi  had  a  rich  intellect  and  an  amiable 
character.  Besides  being  a  philosopher,  he  was  also  a  poet  and 
citizen  of  the  world ;  and  hence  we  find  in  his  philosophizing  an 
absence  of  strict  logical  arrangement  and  precise  expression  of 
thought.  His  writings  are  no  systematic  whole,  but  are  occasional 
treatises  written  "  rhapsodically  and  in  grasshopper  gait,"  for  the 
most  part  in  the  form  of  letters,  dialogues,  and  romances.  "  It 
was  never  my  purpose,"  he  says  himself,  "  to  set  up  a  system  for 
the  schools.  My  writings  have  sprung  from  my  innermost  life, 
and  were  the  result  of  that  which  had  taken  place  within  me. 
In  a  certain  sense  I  did  not  make  them  voluntarily,  but  the;y 
were  drawn  out  of  me  by  a  higher  power  irresistible  to  myself 
This  want  of  an  inner  principle  of  classification  and  of  a  syste 


272 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


matic  arrangement,  renders  a  development  of  J acobi's  philosophy 
not  easy.  It  may  best  be  represented  under  the  following  three 
points  of  view  : — 1.  Jacobi's  polemic  against  mediate  knowledge. 
2.  His  principle  of  immediate  knowledge.  3.  His  relation  to  the 
cotemporaneous  philosophy,  especially  to  the  Kantian  criticism. 

1.  Spinoza  was  the  negative  starting  point  of  Jacobi's  phi- 
losophizing. In  his  work  "  On  the  Doctrine  of  Spinoza,  in 
letters  to  Moses  Mendelssohn''''  (1785),  he  directed  public  attention 
again  to  the  almost  wholly  forgotten  philosophy  of  Spinoza.  The 
correspondence  originated  thus  :  Jacobi  made  the  discovery 
that  Lessing  was  a  Spinozist,  and  announces  this  to  Mendelssohn. 
The  latter  will  not  believe  it,  and  thence  grew  the  farther  his- 
torical and  philosophical  examination.  The  positive  philosophic 
views  which  Jacobi  exhibits  in  this  treatise  can  be  reduced  to  the 
following  three  principles :  (1)  Spinozism  is  fatalism  and  atheism. 
(2)  Every  path  of  philosophic  demonstration  leads  to  fatalism 
and  atheism.  (3)  In  order  that  we  may  not  fall  into  these,  we 
must  set  a  limit  to  demonstrating,  and  recognize  faith  as  the 
element  of  all  metaphysic  knowledge. 

(1.)  Spinozism  is  atheism,  because,  according  to  it,  the  cause 
of  the  world  is  no  person — is  no  being  working  for  an  end,  and 
endowed  with  reason  and  will — and  hence  is  no  God.  It  is  fatal- 
ism, for,  according  to  it,  the  human  will  regards  itself  only  falsely 
as  free. 

(2.)  This  atheism  and  fatalism  is,  however,  only  the  necessary 
consequence  of  all  strictly  demonstrative  philosophizing.  To 
conceive  a  thing,  says  Jacobi,  is  to  refer  a  thing  to  its  nearest 
cause ;  it  is  to  find  a  possible  for  an  actual,  the  condition  for  a 
conditioned,  the  mediation  for  an  immediate.  We  conceive  only 
that  which  we  can  explain  out  of  another.  Hence  our  conceiving 
moves  in  a  chain  of  conditioned  conditions,  and  this  connection 
forms  a  mechanism  of  nature,  in  whose  investigation  our  under- 
standing has  its  immeasurable  field.  However  far  we  may  carry 
conception  and  demonstration,  we  must  hold,  in  reference  to  every 
object,  to  a  still  higher  one  which  conditions  it ;  where  this  chain 
of  the  conditioned  ceases,  there  do  conception  and  demonstration 


JACOBI. 


273 


also  cease ;  till  we  give  up  demonstrating  we  can  reach  no  infinite. 
If  philosophy  determines  to  apprehend  the  infinite  with  the  finite 
understanding,  then  must  it  bring  down  the  divine  to  the  finite ; 
and  here  is  where  every  preceding  philosophy  has  been  entangled, 
while  it  is  obviously  an  absurd  undertaking  to  attempt  to  discover 
the  conditions  of  the  unconditioned,  and  make  the  absolutely 
necessary  a  possible,  in  order  that  we  may  be  able  to  construct  it, 
A  Grod  who  could  be  proved  is  no  God,  for  the  ground  of  proof  is 
ever  above  that  which  is  to  be  proved ;  the  latter  has  its  whole 
reality  from  the  former.  If  the  existence  of  God  should  be 
proved,  then  God  would  be  derived  from  a  ground  which  were 
before  and  above  him.  Hence  the  paradox  of  Jacobi ;  it  is  foi 
the  interest  of  science  that  there  be  no  God,  no  supernatural  and 
no  extra  or  supramundane  being.  Only  upon  the  condition  that 
nature  alone  is,  and  is  therefore  independent  and  all  in  all,  can 
science  hope  to  gain  its  goal  of  perfection,  and  become,  like  its 
object  itself,  all  in  all.  Hence  the  result  which  Jacobi  derives 
from  the  "  Drama  of  the  history  of  philosophy  "  is  this  : — "  There 
is  no  other  philosophy  than  that  of  Spinoza.  He  who  considers 
all  the  works  and  acts  of  men  to  be  the  effect  of  natural  mechan- 
ism, and  who  believes  that  intelligence  is  but  an  accompanying 
consciousness,  which  has  only  to  act  the  part  of  a  looker-on, 
cannot  be  contended  with  and  cannot  be  helped  till  we  set  him 
free  from  his  philosophy.  No  philosophical  conclusion  can  reach 
him,  for  what  he  denies  cannot  be  philosophically  proved,  and 
what  he  proves  cannot  be  philosophically  denied."  Whence  then 
is  help  to  come  ?  "  The  understanding,  taken  by  itself,  is  ma- 
terialistic and  irrational ;  it  denies  spirit  and  God.  The  reason 
taken  by  itself  is  idealistic,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  under- 
standing; it  denies  nature  and  makes  itself  God." 

(3.)  Hence  we  must  seek  another  way  of  knowing  the  supersen- 
sible, which  is  faith.  Jacobi  calls  this  flight  from  cognition  through 
conception  to  faith,  the  salto  mortale  of  the  human  reason.  Every 
certainty  through  a  conception  demands  another  certainty,  but  in 
faith  we  are  led  to  an  immediate  certainty  which  needs  no  ground 
nor  proof,  and  which  is  in  fact  absolutely  exclusive  of  all  proof. 
12* 


274 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


Such  a  confidence  which  does  not  arise  from  arguments,  is  called 
faith.  We  know  the  sensible  as  well  as  the  supersensible  only 
through  faith.  All  human  knowledge  springs  from  revelation  and 
faith. 

These  principles  which  Jacobi  brought  out  in  his  letters  con- 
cerning Spinoza,  did  not  fail  to  arouse  a  universal  opposition  in 
the  German  philosophical  world.  It  was  charged  upon  him  that 
he  was  an  enemy  of  reason,  a  preacher  of  blind  faith,  a  despiser 
of  science  and  of  philosophy,  a  fanatic  and  a  papist.  To  rebut 
these  attacks,  and  to  justify  his  standpoint,  he  wrote  in  1787,  a 
year  and  a  half  after  the  first  appearance  of  the  work  already 
named,  his  dialogue  entitled  "  David  Hume^  or  Faith,  Idealism, 
and  Realism,''''  in  which  he  developes  more  extensively  and  defi- 
nitely his  principle  of  faith  or  immediate  knowledge. 

2.  J acobi  distinguished  his  faith  at  the  outset  from  a  blind 
credence  in  authority.  A  blind  faith  is  that  which  supports  it- 
self on  a  foreign  view,  instead  of  on  the  grounds  of  reason.  But 
this  is  not  the  case  with  his  faith,  which  rather  rests  upon 
the  innermost  necessity  of  the  subject  itself.  Still  farther  :  his 
faith  is  not  an  arbitrary  imagination  :  we  can  imagine  to  our- 
selves every  thing  possible,  but  in  order  to  regard  a  thing  as 
actual,  there  must  be  an  inexplicable  necessity  of  our  feeling, 
which  we  cannot  otherwise  name  than  faith.  J  acobi  was  not  con- 
stant in  his  terminology,  and  hence  did  not  always  express  him- 
self alike  in  respect  of  the  relation  in  which  faith  stood  to  the 
dilferent  sides  of  the  human  faculty  of  knowledge.  In  his  earlier 
terminology  he  placed  faith  (or  as  he  also  called  it,  the  power  of 
faith),  on  the  side  of  the  sense  or  the  receptivity,  and  let  it  stand 
opposed  to  the  understanding  and  the  reason,  taking  these  two 
terms  as  equivalent  expressions  for  the  finite  and  immediate  know- 
ledge of  previous  philosophy ;  afterwards  he  followed  Kant,  and, 
distinguishing  between  the  reason  and  the  understanding,  he 
called  that  reason  which  he  had  previously  named  sense  and  faith. 
According  to  him  now,  the  faith  or  intuition  of  the  reason  is  the 
organ  for  perceiving  the  supersensible.  As  such,  it  stands  op- 
posed to  the  understanding.    There  must  be  a  higher  faculty 


JACOBI. 


275 


which  can  learn,  in  a  way  inconceivable  to  sense  and  the  under- 
standing, that  which  is  true  in  and  above  the  phenomena.  Over 
against  the  explaining  understanding  stands  the  reason,  or  the 
natural  faith  of  the  reason,  which  does  not  explain,  but  positively 
reveals  and  unconditionally  decides.  As  there  is  an  intuition  of 
the  sense,  so  is  there  a  rational  intuition  through  the  reason,  and 
a  demonstration  has  no  more  validity  in  respect  of  the  latter  thaD 
in  respect  of  the  former.  Jacobi  justifies  his  use  of  the  term,  in- 
tuition of  the  reason,  from  the  want  of  any  other  suitable  designa- 
tion. Language  has  no  other  expression  to  indicate  the  way  in 
which  that,  which  is  unattainable  to  the  sense,  becomes  appre- 
hended in  the  transcendental  feeling.  If  any  one  affirms  that  he 
knows  any  thing,  he  may  properly  be  required  to  state  the  origin 
of  his  knowledge,  and  in  doing  this,  he  must  of  necessity  go  back 
either  to  sensation  or  to  feeling;  the  latter  stands  above  the 
former  as  high  as  the  human  species  above  the  brute.  So  1 
affirm,  then,  without  hesitation,  says  Jacobi,  that  my  philosophy/ 
starts  from  pure  feeling,  and  declares  the  authority  of  this  to  be 
supreme.  The  faculty  of  feeling  is  the  highest  in  man,  and  that 
alone  which  specifically  distinguishes  him  from  the  brute.  This 
faculty  is  one  and  the  same  with  reason ;  or,  reason  may  be  said 
to  find  in  it  its  single  and  only  starting  point. 

Jacobi  had  the  clearest  consciousness  of  the  opposition  in 
which  he  stood,  with  this  principle  of  immediate  knowledge,  to 
previous  philosophy.  In  his  introduction  to  his  complete  works, 
he  says :  "  There  had  arisen  since  the  time  of  Aristotle  an  in- 
creasing effort  in  philosophical  schools,  to  subject  the  immediate 
knowledge  to  the  mediate,  to  make  that  faculty  of  perception  which 
originally  establishes  every  thing,  dependent  on  the  faculty  of  re-- 
flection,  which  is  conditioned  through  abstraction ;  to  subordinate 
the  archetype  to  the  copy,  the  essence  to  the  word,  the  reason  to 
the  understanding,  and,  in  fact,  to  make  the  former  wholly  disap- 
pear in  the  latter.  Nothing  is  allowed  to  be  true  which  is  not 
capable  of  a  .double  demonstration,  in  the  intuition  and  in  the 
conception,  in  the  thing  and  in  its  image  or  word ;  the  thing  it- 
self, it  is  said,  must  truly  lie  and  actually  be  known  only  in  the 


276 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


word."  But  every  philosophy  which  allows  only  the  reflecting 
reason,  must  lose  itself  at  length  in  an  utter  ignorance.  Its  end 
is  nihilism. 

3.  From  what  has  been  already  said,  the  position  of  Jacobi 
with  his  principle  of  faith,  in  relation  to  the  Kantian  philosophy, 
can,  partly  at  least,  be  seen.  Jacobi  had  separated  himself  from 
this  philosophy,  partly  in  the  above-named  dialogue  "  David 
Hume,"  (especially  in  an  appendix  to  this,  in  which  he  discussed 
the  transcendental  Idealism),  and  partly  in  his  essay  "  On  the 
attempt  of  criticism  to  hring  the  reason  to  the  understanding  " 
(1801).  His  relation  to  it  may  be  reduced  to  the  following  three 
general  points : 

(1.)  Jacobi  does  not  agree  with  Kant's  theory  of  sensuous 
knowledge.  In  opposition  to  this  theory  he  defends  the  stand- 
point of  empiricism,  affirms  the  truthfulness  of  the  sense-percep- 
tion, and  denies  the  apriority  of  space  and  time,  for  which  Kant  con- 
tends in  order  to  prove  that  objects  as  well  as  their  relations  are 
simply  determinations  of  our  own  self,  and  do  not  at  all  exist  ex- 
ternally to  us.  For,  however  much  it  may  be  affirmed  that  there 
is  something  corresponding  to  our  notions  as  their  cause,  yet  does 
it  remain  concealed  what  this  something  is.  According  to  Kant, 
the  laws  of  our  beholding  and  thinking  are  without  objective 
validity,  our  knowledge  has  no  objective  significance.  But  it  is 
wrong  to  claim  that  in  the  phenomena  there  is  nothing  revealed 
of  the  hidden  truth  which  lies  behind  them.  With  such  a  claim, 
it  were  far  better  to  give  up  completely  the  unknown  thing-in- 
itself,  and  carry  out  to  its  results  the  consequent  idealism.  "  Logi- 
cally, Kant  is  at  fault,  when  he  presupposes  objects  which  make 
impressions  on  our  soul.  He  is  bound  to  teach  the  strictest 
idealism. 

(2.)  Yet  Jacobi  essentially  agrees  with  Kant's  critick  of  the  un- 
derstanding. Jacobi  affirmed,  as  Kant  had  done,  that  the  under- 
standing is  insufficient  to  know  the  supersensible,  and  that  the 
highest  ideas  of  the  reason  could  be  apprehended  only  in  faith. 
Jacobi  places  Kant's  great  merit  in  having  cleared  away  the  ideas, 
which  were  simply  the  products  of  reflection  and  logical  phan- 


JACOBI. 


277 


tasms.  "  It  is  very  easy  for  the  understanding,  when  producing 
one  notion  from  another,  and  thus  gradually  mounting  up  to 
ideas,  to  imagine  that,  hy  virtue  of  these,  which,  though  they 
carry  it  beyond  the  intuitions  of  the  sense,  are  nothing  but  logi- 
cal phantasms,  it  has  not  only  the  faculty  but  the  most  decided 
determination  to  fly  truly  above  the  world  of  sense,  and  to  gain 
by  its  flight  a  higher  science  independent  of  the  intuition,  a  sci- 
ence of  the  supersensible.  Kant  discovers  and  destroys  this  er- 
ror and  self-deception.  Thus  there  is  gained,  at  least,  a  clear 
place  for  a  genuine  rationalism.  This  is  Kant's  truly  great  deed, 
his  immortal  merit.  But  the  sound  sense  of  our  sage  did  not  al- 
low him  to  hide  from  himself  that  this  clear  place  must  disappear 
in  a  gulf,  which  would  swallow  up  in  itself  all  knowledge  of  the 
true,  unless  a  God  should  interpose  to  hinder  it.  Here  Kant's 
doctrine  and  mine  meet." 

(8.)  But  Jacobi  does  not  fully  agree  with  Kant,  in  wholly 
denying  to  the  theoretical  reason  the  faculty  of  objective  knowl- 
edge. He  blames  Kant  for  complaining  that  the  human  reason 
cannot  theoretically  prove  the  reality  of  its  ideas.  He  affirm? 
that  Kant  is  thus  still  entangled  in  the  delusion,  that  the  onl} 
reason  why  these  ideas  cannot  be  proved,  is  found  in  the  nature 
of  the  ideas  themselves,  and  not  in  the  deficient  nature  of  our 
knowledge.  Kant  therefore  attempts  to  seek,  in  a  practical  way, 
a  kind  of  scientific  proof;  a  roundabout  way,  which,  to  every 
profound  seeker,  must  seem  folly,  since  every  proof  is  as  impossi- 
ble as  it  is  unnecessary. 

Jacobi  agreed  better  with  Kant,  than  with  the  post-Kantian 
philosophy.  The  atheistic  tendency  of  the  latter  was  especially 
repulsive  to  him.  "  To  Kant,  that  profound  thinker  and  upright 
philosopher,  the  words  God,  freedom,  immortality,  and  religion, 
signified  the  same  as  they  have  ever  done  to  the  sound  human 
understanding ;  he  in  no  way  treats  them  as  nothing  but  decep- 
tion. He  created  offence  by  irresistibly  showing  the  insufficiency 
of  all  proofs  of  speculative  philosophy  for  these  ideas.  That 
which  was  wanting  in  the  theoretical  proof,  he  made  up  by  the 
necessary  postulates  of  a  pure  practical  reason.    With  these,  ac- 


278 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


cording  to  Kant's  assurance,  philosopliy  was  fully  helped  out  of 
her  difficulty,  and  the  goal,  which  had  been  always  missed,  actu- 
ally reached.  But  the  first  daughter  of  the  critical  philosophy 
(Fichte's  system)  makes  the  living  and  working  moral  order  it- 
self to  be  God,  a  God  expressly  declared  to  be  without  conscious- 
ness and  self-existence.  These  frank  words,  spoken  publicly  and 
without  restraint,  roused  some  attention,  but  the  fear  soon  sub- 
sided. Presently  astonishment  ceased  wholly,  for  the  second 
daughter  of  the  critical  philosophy  (Schelling's  system)  gave  up 
entirely  the  distinction  which  the  first  had  allowed  to  remain  be- 
tween natural  and  moral  philosophy,  necessity  and  freedom,  and 
without  any  further  ado  affirmed  that  the  only  existence  is  na- 
ture, and  that  there  is  nothing  above ;  this  second  daughter  is 
Spinozism  transfigured  and  reversed,  an  ideal  materialism."  This 
latter  allusion  to  Schelling,  connected  as  it  was  with  other  and 
harder  thrusts  in  the  same  essay,  called  out  from  this  philosopher 
the  well-known  answer  :  "  Schelling''s  Monument  to  the  Treatise 
on  Divine  Things^  1812." 

If  we  now  take  a  critical  survey  of  the  philosophical  stand- 
point of  Jacobi,  we  shall  find  its  peculiarity  to  consist  in  the  ab- 
stract separation  of  understanding  and  feeling.  These  two  Ja- 
cobi could  not  bring  into  harmony.  "  There  is  light  in  my 
heart,"  he  says,  "  but  it  goes  out  whenever  I  attempt  to  bring  it 
into  the  understanding.  Which  is  the  true  luminary  of  these 
two  ?  That  of  the  understanding,  which,  though  it  reveals  fixed 
forms,  shows  behind  them  only  a  baseless  gulf  ?  Or  that  of  the 
heart,  which  points  its  light  promisingly  upwards,  though  deter- 
minate knowledge  escapes  it  ?  Can  the  human  spirit  grasp  the 
truth  unless  it  possesses  these  two  luminaries  united  in  one  light  ? 
And  is  this  union  conceivable  except  through  a  miracle  V  "  If 
now,  in  order  to  escape  in  a  certain  degree  this  contradiction  be- 
tween understanding  and  feeling,  Jacobi  gave  to  immediate 
knowledge  the  place  of  mediate  as  finite  knowledge,  this  was  a 
self-deception.  Even  that  knowledge,  which  is  supposed  to  be 
immediate,  and  which  Jacobi  regards  as  the  peculiar  organ  for 
knowing  the  supersensible,  is  also  mediate,  obliged  to  go  through 


FICHTE. 


279 


a  course  of  subjective  mediations,  and  can  only  give  itself  out  as 
immediate  when  it  wholly  forgets  its  own  origin. 


SECTION  XLI. 

FICHTE 

JoHANN  Gottlieb  Fichte  was  born  at  Eammenau,  in  Upper 
Lusatia,  1762.  A  nobleman  of  Silesia  became  interested  in  the 
boy,  and  having  committed  him  first  to  the  instruction  of  a 
clergyman,  he  afterwards  placed  him  at  the  high  school  at  Schulp- 
forte.  In  his  eighteenth  year,  at  Michaelmas,  1780,  Fichte 
entered  the  university  at  Jena  to  study  theology.  He  soon  found 
himself  attracted  to  philosophy,  and  became  powerfully  afi"ected 
by  the  study  of  Spinoza.  His  pecuniary  circumstances  were 
straitened,  but  this  only  served  to  harden  his  will  and  his  energy. 
In  1784  he  became  employed  as  a  teacher  in  a  certain  family, 
and  spent  some  time  in  this  occupation  with  different  families  in 
Saxony.  In  1787  he  sought  a  place  as  country  clergyman,  but 
was  refused  on  account  of  his  religious  opinions.  He  was  now 
obliged  to  leave  his  fatherland,  to  which  he  clung  with  his  whole 
soul.  He  repaired  to  Zurich,  where,  in  1788,  he  took  a  post  as 
private  tutor,  and  where  also  he  became  acquainted  with  his 
future  wife,  a  sister's  daughter  of  Klopstock.  At  Easter,  1790, 
he  returned  to  Saxony  and  taught  privately  at  Leipsic,  where  he 
became  acquainted  with  the  Kantian  philosophy,  by  means  of 
lessons  which  he  was  obliged  to  give  to  a  student.  In  the  spring 
of  1791  we  find  him  as  private  tutor  at  Warsaw,  and  soon  after 
in  Konigsberg,  where  he  resorted,  that  he  might  become  personally 
acquainted  with  the  Kant  he  had  learned  to  revere.  Instead  of 
a  letter  of  recommendation  he  presented  him  his  "  Gritich  of  all 
Bevelation,^''  a  treatise  which  Fichte  composed  in  eight  days. 
In  this  he  attempted  to  deduce,  from  the  practical  reason,  the 
possibility  of  a  revelation.    This  is  not  seen  purely  apriori,  but 


280 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


only  under  an  empirical  condition ;  we  must  consider  humanity 
to  be  in  a  moral  ruin  so  complete,  that  the  moral  law  has  lost  all 
its  influence  upon  the  will  and  all  morality  is  extinguished.  In 
such  a  case  we  may  expect  that  God,  as  moral  governor  of  the 
world,  would  give  man,  through  the  sense,  some  pure  moral  im- 
pulses, and  reveal  himself  as  lawgiver  to  them  through  a  special 
manifestation  determined  for  this  end,  in  the  world  of  sense.  In 
such  a  case  a  particular  revelation  were  a  postulate  of  the  practi- 
cal reason.  Fichte  sought  also  to  determine  apriori  the  possible 
content  of  such  a  revelation.  Since  we  need  to  know  nothing 
but  God,  freedom,  and  immortality,  the  revelation  will  contain 
naught  but  these,  and  these  it  must  contain  in  a  comprehensible 
form,  yet  so  that  the  symbolical  dress  may  lay  no  claim  to  un- 
limitsd  veneration.  This  treatise,  which  appeared  anonymously 
in  1792,  at  once  attracted  the  greatest  attention,  and  was  at  first 
universally  regarded  as  a  work  of  Kant.  It  procured  for  its 
author,  soon  after,  a  call  to  the  chair  of  philosophy  at  Jena,  to 
succeed  Reinhold,  who  then  went  to  Kiel.  Fichte  received  this 
appointment  in  1793  at  Zurich,  where  he  had  gone  to  consummate 
his  marriage.  At  the  same  time  he  wrote  and  published,  also 
anonymously,  his  "  Aids  to  correct  views  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion an  essay  which  the  governments  never  looked  upon  with 
favor.  At  Easter,  1794,  he  entered  upon  his  new  office,  and  soon 
saw  his  public  call  confirmed.  Taking  now  a  new  standpoint, 
which  transcended  Kant,  he  sought  to  establish  this,  and  carry  it 
out  in  a  series  of  writings  (the  Wissenschaftslehre  appeared  in 
1794,  the  Naturrecht  in  1796,  and  the  Sittenlehre  in  1798),  by 
which  he  exerted  a  powerful  influence  upon  the  scientific  move- 
ment in  Germany,  aided  as  he  was  in  this  by  the  fact  that  Jena 
was  then  one  of  the  most  flourishing  of  the  German  universi- 
ties, and  the  resort  of  every  vigorous  head.  With  Goethe, 
Schiller,  the  brothers  Schlegel,  William  von  Humboldt,  and 
Hufeland,  Fichte  was  in  close  fellowship,  though  this  was  unfortu- 
nately broken  after  a  few  years.  In  1795  he  became  associate 
editor  of  the  ^^Philosophical  Journal^''  which  had  been  established 
by  Niethammer.    A  fellow-laborer,  Rector  Forberg,  at  Saalfeld, 


FICHTE. 


281 


offered  for  publication  in  this  journal  an  article  "  to  determine 
the  conception  of  religion."  Fichte  advised  the  author  not  to 
publish  it,  but  at  length  inserted  it  in  the  journal,  prefacing  it, 
however,  with  an  introduction  of  his  own  "  On  the  ground  of  our 
faith  in  a  divine  government  of  the  world,^^  in  which  he  en- 
deavored to  remove,  or  at  least  soften,  the  views  in  the  article 
which  might  give  offence.  Both  the  essays  raised  a  great  cry  of 
atheism.  The  elector  of  Saxony  confiscated  the  journal  in  his 
territory,  and  sent  a  requisition  to  the  dukes  Ernest,  who  held 
in  common  the  university  of  Jena,  to  summon  the  author  to  trial 
and  punishment.  Fichte  answered  the  edict  of  confiscation  and 
attempted  to  justify  himself  to  the  public  (1799),  by  his  "  Appeal 
to  the  Public.  An  essay  which  it  is  reqicested  may  be  read 
before  it  is  confiscated while  he  defended  his  course  to  the 
government  by  an  article  entitled  "  The  Publishers  of  the  Phi- 
losophical Journal  justified  from  the  charge  of  Atheism^  The 
government  of  Weimar,  being  as  anxious  to  spare  him  as  it  was 
to  please  the  elector  of  Saxony,  delayed  its  decision.  But  as 
Fichte,  either  with  or  without  reason,  had  privately  learned  that 
the  whole  matter  was  to  be  settled  by  reprimanding  the  accused 
parties  for  their  want  of  caution ;  and,  desiring  either  a  civil 
acquittal  or  an  open  and  proper  satisfaction,  he  wrote  a  private 
letter  to  a  member  of  the  government,  in  which  he  desired  his 
dismission  in  case  of  a  reprimand,  and  which  he  closed  with  the 
intimation  that  many  of  his  friends  would  leave  the  university 
with  him,  in  order  to  establish  together  a  new  one  in  G-ermany. 
The  government  regarded  this  letter  as  an  application  for  his  dis- 
charge, indirectly  declaring  that  the  reprimand  was  unavoidable. 
Fichte,  now  an  object  of  suspicion,  both  on  account  of  his  religious 
and  political  views,  looked  about  him  in  vain  for  a  place  of  refuge. 
The  prince  of  Rudolstadt,  to  whom  he  turned,  denied  him  his 
protection,  and  his  arrival  in  Berlin  (1799)  attracted  great  notice. 
In  Berlin,  where  he  had  much  intercourse  with  Frederick  Schlegel, 
and  also  with  Schleiermacher  and  Novalis,  his  views  became 
gradually  modified ;  the  catastrophe  at  Jena  had  led  him  from 
the  exclusive  moral  standpoint  which  he,  resting  upon  Kant,  had 


282 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


hitherto  held,  to  the  sphere  of  religion ;  he  now  sought  to  recon 
cile  religion  with  his  standpoint  of  the  Wissenshaftshhre,  and 
turned  himself  to  a  certain  mysticism  (the  second  form  of  the 
Fichtian  theory).  After  he  had  privately  taught  a  number  of 
years  in  Berlin,  and  had  also  held  philosophical  lectures  for  men 
of  culture,  he  was  recommended  (1806)  by  Beyme  and  Altenstein, 
chancellor  of  state  of  Hardenberg,  to  a  professorship  of  philo- 
sophy in  Erlangen,  an  appointment  which  he  received  together 
with  a  permit  to  return  to  Berlin  in  the  winter,  and  hold  there 
his  philosophical  lectures  before  the  public.  Thus,  in  the  winter 
of  1807-8,  while  a  French  marshal  was  governor  of  Berlin,  and 
while  his  voice  was  often  drowned  by  the  hostile  tumults  of  the 
enemy  through  the  streets,  he  delivered  his  famous  Addresses  to 
the  German  nation.''''  Fichte  labored  most  assiduously  for  the 
foundation  of  the  Berlin  university,  for  only  by  wholly  trans- 
forming the  common  education  did  he  believe  the  regeneration  of 
Germany  could  be  secured.  As  the  new  university  was  opened 
1809,  he  was  made  in  the  first  year  dean  of  the  philosophical 
faculty,  and  in  the  second  was  invested  with  the  dignity  of  rector. 
In  the  "  war  of  liberation,"  then  breaking  out,  Fichte  took  the 
liveliest  participation  byword  and  deed.  His  wife  had  contracted 
a  nervous  fever  by  her  care  of  the  sick  and  wounded,  and  though 
she  recovered,  he  fell  a  victim  to  the  same  disease.  He  died  Jan. 
28,  1814,  not  having  yet  completed  his  fifty-second  year. 

In  the  following  exposition  of  Fichte's  philosophy,  we  distin- 
guish between  the  two  internally  different  periods  of  his  philosophi- 
zing, that  of  J ena  and  that  of  Berlin.  The  first  division  will  include 
two  parts — Fichte's  theory  of  science  and  his  practical  philosophy. 

I.  The  Fichtian  Philosophy  in  its  Original  Form.  1. 
The  Theoretical  Philosophy  of  Fichte,  his  Wissenschafts- 
LEHRE,  OR  Theory  of  Science. — It  has  already  been  shown  (^  39) 
that  the  thoroughly-going  subjective  idealism  of  Fichte  was  only 
the  logical  consequence  of  the  Kantian  standpoint.  It  was  wholly 
unavoidable  that  Fichte  should  entirely  reject  the  Kantian  essen- 
tially thing  {thing  in  itself)^  which  Kant  had  himself  declared  to 
be  unrecognizable  though  real,  and  that  he  should  posit  as  a 


FICHTE. 


283 


proper  act.  of  the  mind,  that  external  influence  which  Kant  had 
referred  to  the  essentially  thing.  That  the  Ego  alone  is,  and  that 
which  we  regard  as  a  limitation  of  the  Ego  by  external  objects, 
is  rather  the  proper  self-limitation  of  the  Ego ;  this  is  the  grand 
feature  of  the  Fichtian  as  of  every  idealism. 

Fichte  himself  supported  the  standpoint  of  this  Theory  of 
Science  as  follows :  In  every  experience  there  is  conjointly  an 
Ego  and  a  thing,  the  intelligence  and  its  object.  Which  of  these 
two  sides  must  now  be  reduced  to  the  other  ?  If  the  philosophei 
abstracts  the  Ego,  he  has  remaining  an  essentially  thing,  and  must 
then  apprehend  his  representations  or  sensations  as  the  products 
of  this  object ;  if  he  abstracts  the  object,  he  has  remaining  an  es- 
sentially Ego  (an  Ego  in  itself).  The  former  is  dogmatism,  the 
latter  idealism.  Both  are  irreconcilable  with  each  other,  and 
there  is  no  third  way  possible.  We  must  therefore  choose  be- 
tween the  two.  In  order  to  decide  between  the  two  systems,  we 
must  note  the  following:  (1)  That  the  Ego  appears  in  conscious- 
ness, wherefore  the  essentially  thing  is  a  pure  invention,  since 
in  consciousness  we  have  only  that  which  is  perceived  ;  (2.)  Dog- 
matism must  account  for  the  origin  of  its  representation  through 
some  essentially  object,  it  must  start  from  something  which  does 
not  lie  in  the  consciousness.  But  the  effect  of  being  is  only  being, 
and  not  representation.  Hence  idealism  alone  can  be  correct 
which  does  not  start  from  being,  but  from  intelligence.  Accord- 
ing to  idealism,  intelligence  is  only  active,  not  passive,  because  it 
is  a  first  and  absolute  :  and  on  this  account  there  belongs  to  it  no 
being,  but  simply  an  acting.  The  forms  of  this  acting,  the  system 
of  the  necessary  mode  in  which  intelligence  acts,  must  be  found 
from  the  essence  of  intelligence.  If  we  should  take  the  laws  of 
intelligence  from  experience,  as  Kant  did  his  categories,  we  fail 
in  two  respects:  (1)  We  do  not  see  why  intelligence  must  so 
act,  nor  whether  these  laws  are  immanent  laws  of  intelligence ; 
(2)  We  do  not  see  how  the  object  itself  originates.  Hence  the 
fundamental  principles  of  intelligence,  as  well  as  the  objective 
world,  must  be  derived  from  the  Ego  itself. 

Fichte  supposed  that  in  these  results  he  only  expressed  the 


284 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


true  sense  of  the  Kantian  philosopliy.  "  Whatever  my  system 
may  properly  be,  whether  the  genuine  criticism  thoroughly  car 
ried  out,  as  I  believe  it  is,  or  howsoever  it  be  named,  is  of  no  ac- 
count." His  system,  Fichte  affirms,  had  the  same  view  of  the 
matter  as  Kant's,  while  the  numerous  followers  of  this  philosopher 
had  wholly  mistaken  and  misunderstood  their  master's  idealism. 
In  the  second  introduction  to  the  Theory  of  Science  (1797), 
Fichte  grants  to  these  expounders  of  the  Critick  of  pure  Eeason 
that  it  contains  some  passages  where  Kant  would  affirm  that  sen- 
sations must  be  given  to  the  subject  from  without  as  the  material 
conditions  of  objective  reality ;  but  shows  that  the  innumerably 
repeated  declarations  of  the  Critick,  that  there  could  be  no  influ- 
ence upon  us  of  a  real  transcendental  object  outside  of  us,  cannot 
at  all  be  reconciled  with  these  passages,  if  any  thing  other  than  a 
simple  thought  be  understood  as  the  ground  of  the  sensations. 
"  So  long,"  adds  Fichte,  "  as  Kant  does  not  expressly  declare  that 
he  derives  sensations  from  an  impression  of  some  essentially  thing, 
or,  to  use  his  terminology,  that  sensation  must  be  explained  from 
a  transcendental  object  existing  externally  to  us  :  so  long  will  I 
not  believe  what  these  expounders  tell  us  of  Kant.  But  if  he 
should  give  such  an  explanation,  I  should  sooner  regard  the  Crit- 
ick of  Pure  Keason  to  be  a  work  of  chance  than  of  design."  For 
such  an  explanation  the  aged  Kant  did  not  suffer  him  long  to 
wait.  In  the  IntelligenzhlaU  der  Allgemeinen  Litter atur 2 eitung 
(1799),  he  formally,  and  with  much  emphasis,  rejects  the  Fichtian 
improvement  of  his  system,  and  protests  against  every  interpreta- 
tion of  his  writings  according  to  the  conceit  of  any  mind,  while  he 
maintains  the  literal  interpretation  of  his  theory  as  laid  down  in 
the  Critick  of  Reason.  Reinhold  remarks  upon  all  this  :  "  Since 
the  well  known  and  public  explanation  of  Kant  respecting  Fichte's 
philosophy,  there  can  be  no  longer  a  doubt  that  Kant  himself 
would  represent  his  own  system,  and  desire  to  have  it  represented 
by  his  readers,  entirely  otherwise  than  Fichte  had  represented  and 
interpreted  it.  But  from  this  it  irresistibly  follows,  that  Kant 
himself  did  not  regard  his  system  as  illogical  because  it  presup- 
posed something  external  to  the  subjectivity.     Nevertheless,  it 


FICHTE. 


285 


does  not  at  all  follow  that  Fichte  erred  when  he  declared  that  this 
system,  with  such  a  presupposition,  must  be  illogical."  So  much 
for  Reinhold.  That  Kant  himself  did  not  fail  to  see  this  incon- 
clusiveness,  is  evident  from  the  changes  he  introduced  into  the 
second  edition  of  the  Critick  of  Pure  Reason,  where  he  suffered 
the  idealistic  side  of  his  system  to  fall  back  decidedly  behind  the 
empirical. 

From  what  has  been  said,  we  can  see  the  universal  standpoint 
of  the  Theory  of  Science;  the  Ego  is  made  a  principle,  and 
from  the  Ego  every  thing  else  is  sought  to  be  derived.  It  hardly 
needs  to  be  remarked,  that  by  this  Ego  we  are  to  understand,  not 
any  individual,  but  the  universal  Ego,  the  universal  rationality. 
The  Ego  and  the  individual,  the  pure  and  the  empirical  Ego,  are 
wholly  different  conceptions. 

We  have  still  the  following  preface  to  make  concerning  the 
form  of  the  Theory  of  Science.  A  theory  of  science,  according 
to  Fichte,  must  posit  some  supreme  principle,  from  which  every 
other  must  be  derived.  This  supreme  principle  must  be  absolute- 
ly, and  through  itself,  certain.  If  our  human  knowledge  should 
be  any  thing  but  fragmentary,  there  must  be  such  a  supreme 
principle.  But  now,  since  such  a  principle  does  not  admit  of 
proof,  every  thing  depends  upon  giving  it  a  trial.  Its  test  and 
demonstration  can  only  be  thus  gained,  viz.,  if  we  find  a  principle 
to  which  all  science  may  be  referred,  then  is  this  shown  to  be  a 
fundamental  principle.  But  besides  the  first  fundamental  princi- 
ple, there  are  yet  two  others  to  be  considered,  the  one  of  which  is 
unconditioned  as  to  its  content,  but  as  to  its  form,  conditioned 
through  and  derived  from  the  first  fundamental  principle ;  the 
other  the  reverse.  The  relation  of  these  three  principles  to  each 
other  is,  in  fine,  this,  viz.,  that  the  second  stands  opposed  to  the 
first,  while  a  third  is  the  product  of  the  two.  Hence,  according 
to  this  plan,  the  first  absolute  principle  starts  from  the  Ego,  the 
second  opposes  to  the  Ego  a  thing  or  a  non-Ego,  and  the  third 
brings  forward  the  Ego  again  in  reaction  against  the  thing  or  the 
non-Ego.  This  method  of  Fichte  (thesis, — antithesis, — synthesis) 
is  the  same  as  Hegel  subsequently  adopted,  and  applied  to  the 


286 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


whole  system  of  philosophy,  a  union  of  the  synthetical  and  ana- 
lytical methods.  We  start  with  a  fundamental  synthesis,  which 
we  analyze  to  produce  its  antitheses,  in  order  to  unite  these  anti- 
theses again  through  a  second  synthesis.  But  in  making  this 
second  synthesis,  our  analysis  discovers  still  farther  antitheses, 
which  obliges  us  therefore  to  find  another  synthesis,  and  so  on- 
ward in  the  process,  till  we  come  at  length  to  antitheses  which  can 
no  longer  he  perfectly  but  only  approximately  connected. 

We  stand  now  upon  the  threshold  of  the  Theory  of  Science. 
It  is  divided  into  three  parts.  (1)  General  principles  of  a  theory 
of  science.  (2)  Principles  of  theoretical  knowledge.  (3)  Prin- 
ciples of  practical  science. 

As  has  already  been  said,  there  are  three  supreme  fundamen- 
tal principles,  one  absolutely  unconditioned,  and  two  relatively 
unconditioned. 

(1.)  The  absolutely  first  and  absolutely  unconditioned  funda- 
mental principle  ought  to  express  that  act  of  the  mind  which  lies 
at  the  basis  of  all  consciousness,  and  alone  makes  consciousness 
possible.  Such  is  the  principle  of  identity,  A=A.  This  princi- 
ple remains,  and  cannot  be  thought  away,  though  every  empirical 
determination  be  removed.  It  is  a  fact  of  consciousness,  and 
must,  therefore,  be  universally  admitted :  but  at  the  same  time  it 
is  by  no  means  conditioned,  like  every  other  empirical  fact,  but 
unconditioned,  because  it  is  a  free  act.  By  affirming  that  this 
principle  is  certain  without  any  farther  ground,  we  ascribe  to  our- 
selves the  faculty  of  positing  something  absolutely.  We  do  not, 
therefore,  affirm  that  A  is,  but  only  that  if  A  is,  then  it  is  equal 
to  A.  It  is  no  matter  now  about  the  content  of  the  principle,  we 
need  only  regard  its  form.  The  principle  A=A  is,  therefore, 
conditioned  (hypothetically)  as  to  its  content,  and  unconditioned 
only  as  to  its  form  and  its  connection.  If  we  would  now  have  a 
principle  unconditioned  in  its  content  as  well  as  in  its  connection, 
we  put  Ego  in  the  place  of  A,  as  we  are  fully  entitled  to  do,  since 
the  connection  of  subject  and  predicate  contained  in  the  judgment 
A=A  is  posited  in  the  Ego  and  through  the  Ego.  Hence  A=A 
becomes  transformed  into  Ego=Ego.    This  principle  is  uncondi- 


FICHTE. 


287 


tioned  not  only  as  to  its  connection,  but  also  as  to  its  content. 
While  we  could  not,  instead  of  A=A,  say  that  A  is,  yet  we  can 
instead  of  Ego=Ego,  say  that  Ego  is.  All  the  facts  of  the  em- 
pirical consciousness  find  their  ground  of  explanation  in  this,  viz., 
that  before  any  thing  else  is  posited  in  the  Ego,  the  Ego  itself  is 
there.  This  fact,  that  the  Ego  is  absolutely  posited  and  grounded 
on  itself,  is  the  basis  of  all  acting  in  the  human  mind,  and  shows 
the  pure  character  of  activity  in  itself.  The  Ego  is,  because  it 
posits  itself,  and  it  only  is,  because  this  simple  positing  of  itself  is 
wholly  by  itself.  The  being  of  the  Ego  is  thus  seen  in  the  posi- 
ting of  the  Ego,  and  on  the  other  hand,  the  Ego  is  enabled  to 
posit  simply  by  virtue  of  its  being.  It  is  at  the  same  time  the 
acting,  and  the  product  of  the  action.  I  am,  is  the  expression  of 
the  only  possible  deed.  Logically  considered  we  have,  in  the 
first  principle  of  a  Theory  of  Science,  A=A,  the  logical  law  of 
identity.  From  the  proposition  A==A,  we  arrive  at  the  proposi- 
tion Ego=Ego.  The  latter  proposition,  however,  does  not  derive 
its  validity  from  the  former,  but  contrarywise.  The  prius  of  all 
judgments  is  the  Ego,  which  posits  the  connection  of  subject  and 
predicate.  The  logical  law  of  identity  arises,  therefore,  from 
Ego = Ego.  Metaphysically  considered,  we  have  in  this  same  first 
principle  of  a  Theory  of  Science,  the  category  of  reality.  We 
obtain  this  category  by  abstracting  every  thing  from  the  content, 
and  reflecting  simply  upon  the  mode  of  acting  of  the  human  mind. 
From  the  Ego,  as  the  absolute  subject,  every  category  is  derived 
(2.)  The  second  fundamental  principle  y  conditioned  in  its  con- 
tent, and  only  unconditioned  in  its  form,  which  is  just  as  incapable 
as  the  first  of  demonstration  or  derivation,  is  also  a  fact  of  the 
empirical  consciousness  :  it  is  the  proposition  non-A  is  not=A. 
This  sentence  is  unconditioned  in  its  form,  because  it  is  free  act 
like  the  first,  from  which  it  cannot  be  derived  ;  but  in  its  content, 
as  to  its  matter  it  is  conditioned,  because  if  a  non-A  is  posited, 
there  must  have  previously  been  posited  an  A.  Let  us  examine 
this  principle  more  closely.  In  the  first  principle,  A=A,  the 
form  of  the  act  was  a  positing,  while  in  this  second  principle  it  is 
an  oppositing.    There  is  an  absolute  opposition,  and  this  opposi- 


288 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


tioD,  in  its  simple  form,  is  an  act  absolutely  possible,  standing  un- 
der no  condition,  limited  by  no  higher  ground.  But  as  to  its 
matter,  the  opposition  presupposes  a  position;  the  non-A  cannot 
be  posited  without  the  A.  What  non-A  is,  I  do  not  through  that 
yet  know :  I  only  know  concerning  non-A  that  it  is  the  opposite 
of  A  :  hence  I  only  know  what  non-A  is  under  the  condition  that 
I  know  A.  But  now  A  is  posited  through  the  Ego ;  there  is 
originally  nothing  posited  but  the  Ego,  and  nothing  but  this  abso- 
lutely posited.  Hence  there  can  be  an  absolute  opposition  only 
to  the  Ego.  That  which  is  opposed  to  the  Ego  is  the  non-Ego. 
A  non-Ego  is  absolutely  opposed  to  the  Ego,  and  this  is  the  second 
fact  of  the  empirical  consciousness.  In  every  thing  ascribed  to 
the  Ego,  the  contrary,  by  virtue  of  this  simple  opposition,  must 
be  ascribed  to  the  non  Ego. — As  we  obtained  from  the  first  prin- 
ciple Ego==Ego,  the  logical  law  of  identity,  so  now  we  have,  from 
the  second  sentence  Ego  is  not  =  non-Ego,  the  logical  law  of  con- 
tradiction. And  metaphysically, — since  we  wholly  abstract  the 
definite  act  of  judgment,  and,  simply  in  the  form  of  sequence,  con- 
clude not-being  from  opposite  being, — -we  possess  from  this  second 
principle  the  category  of  negation. 

(3.)  The  third  principle^  conditioned  in  its  form,  is  almost 
capable  of  proof,  since  it  is  determined  by  two  others.  At  every 
step  we  approach  the  province  where  every  thing  can  be  proved. 
This  third  principle  is  conditioned  in  its  form,  and  unconditioned 
only  in  its  content :  i.  e.  the  problem,  but  not  the  solution  of  the 
act  to  be  established  through  it,  has  been  given  through  the  two 
preceding  principles.  The  solution  is  afi'orded  unconditionally 
and  absolutely  by  a  decisive  word  of  the  reason.  The  problem  to 
be  solved  by  this  third  principle  is  this,  viz.,  to  adjust  the  con- 
tradiction contained  in  the  two  former  ones.  On  the  one  side, 
the  Ego  is  wholly  suppressed  by  the  non-Ego  :  there  can  be  no 
positing  of  the  Ego  so  far  as  the  non-Ego  is  posited.  On  the 
other  side,  the  non-Ego  is  only  an  Ego  posited  in  the  conscious- 
ness, and  hence  the  Ego  is  not  suppressed  by  the  non-  Ego.  The 
Ego  appearing  on  the  one  side  to  be  suppressed,  is  not  really  sup- 
pressed. Such  a  result  would  be  non-A=A.  In  order  to  remove 


FICHTE. 


289 


this  contradiction,  wbicli  threatens  to  destroy  the  identity  of  our 
consciousness,  and  the  only  absolute  foundation  of  our  knowledge, 
we  must  find  in  x  that  which  will  justify  both  of  the  first  two 
principles,  and  leave  the  identity  of  our  consciousness  undisturbed. 
The  two  opposites,  the  Ego  and  the  non-Ego,  should  be  united  in 
the  consciousness,  should  be  alike  posited  without  either  excluding 
the  other ;  they  should  be  received  in  the  identity  of  the  proper 
consciousness.  How  shall  being  and  not-being,  reality  and  nega- 
tion, be  conceived  together  without  destroying  each  other  ?  They 
will  reciprocally  limit  each  other.  Hence  the  unknown  quantity 
whose  terms  we  are  seeking,  stands  for  these  limits :  limitation 
is  the  sought-for  act  of  the  Ego,  and  as  category  in  the  thought, 
we  have  thus  the  category  of  determination  or  limitation.  But 
in  limitation,  there  is  also  given  the  category  of  quantity^  for 
when  we  say  that  any  thing  is  limited,  wc  mean  that  its  reality  is 
through  negation,  not  wholly^  but  only  j[>artially  suppressed. 
Thus  the  conception  of  limit  contains  also  the  conception  of  divisi- 
bility, besides  the  conceptions  of  reality  and  negation.  Through 
the  act  of  limitation,  the  Ego  as  well  as  the  non-Ego,  is  posited  as 
divisible.  Still  farther,  we  see  how  a  logical  law  follows  from  the 
third  fundamental  principle  as  well  as  from  the  first  two.  If  we 
abstract  the  definite  content,  the  Ego  and  the  non-Ego,  and  leave 
remaining  the  simple  form  of  the  union  of  opposites  through  the 
conception  of  divisibility,  we  have  then  the  logical  principle  of 
the  ground^  or  foundation,  which  may  be  expressed  in  the  formula : 
A  in  part  =  non-A,  non-A  in  part  =  A.  Wherever  two  oppo- 
sites are  alike  in  one  characteristic,  we  consider  the  ground  as  a 
ground  of  relation,  and  wherever  two  similar  things  are  opposite 
in  one  characteristic,  we  consider  the  ground  as  a  ground  of  dis- 
tinction.— With  these  three  principles  we  have  now  exhausted  the 
measure  of  that  which  is  unconditioned  and  absolutely  certain. 
We  can  embrace  the  three  in  the  following  formula  : 

/  posit  in  the  Ego  a  divisible  non  Ego  over  against  the 
divisible  Ego.    No  philosophy  can  go  beyond  this  cognition,  and 
every  fundamental  philosophy  should  go  back  to  this.    Just  so 
far  as  it  does  this,  it  becomes  science  (Wissenschaftslehre). 
13 


290 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


Every  thing  which  can  appear  in  a  system  of  knowledge,  as  well 
as  a  farther  division  of  the  Theory  of  Science  itself,  must  be  de- 
rived from  this.  The  proposition  that  the  Ego  and  the  non-Ego 
reciprocally  limit  each  other,  may  be  divided  into  the  following 
two  :  (1)  the  Ego  posits  itself  as  limited  through  the  non-Ego 
{i.  e.  the  Ego  is  in  a  cognitive  (or  passive)  relation  ) ;  (2)  the 
Ego  posits  the  non-Ego  as  limited  through  the  Ego  {i.  e.  the  Ego 
is  in  an  active  relation).  The  former  proposition  is  the  basis  of 
the  theoretical,  and  the  latter  of  the  practical  part  of  the  Theory 
of  Science.  The  latter  part  cannot,  at  the  outset,  be  brought 
upon  the  stage;  for  the  non-Ego,  which  should  be  limited  by  the 
acting  Ego,  does  not  at  the  outset  exist,  and  we  must  wait  and 
see  whether  it  will  find,  in  the  theoretical  part,  a  reality. 

The  groundwork  of  theoretical  knowledge  advances  through 
an  uninterrupted  series  of  antitheses  and  syntheses.  The  funda- 
mental synthesis  of  the  theoretical  Theory  of  Science  is  the  pro- 
position :  the  Ego  posits  itself  as  determined  (limited)  hy  the 
non-Ego.  If  we  analyze  this  sentence,  we  find  in  it  two  subordi- 
nate sentences  which  are  reciprocally  opposite.  (1)  The  non- 
Ego  as  active  determines  the  Ego,  which  thus  far  is  passive ;  but 
since  all  activity  must  start  from  the  Ego,  so  (2)  the  Ego  deter- 
mines itself  through  an  absolute  activity.  Herein  is  a  contradic- 
tion, that  the  Ego  should  be  at  the  same  time  active  and  passive. 
Since  this  contradiction  would  destroy  the  above  proposition,  and 
also  suppress  the  unity  of  consciousness,  we  are  forced  to  seek 
some  point,  some  new  synthesis,  in  which  these  given  antitheses 
may  be  united.  This  synthesis  is  attained  when  we  find  that  the 
conceptions  of  action  and  passion,  which  are  contained  under  the 
categories  of  reality  and  negation,  find  their  compensation  and 
due  adjustment  in  the  conception  of  divisibility.  The  propo- 
sitions :  "  the  Ego  determines,"  and  "  the  Ego  is  determined," 
are  reconciled  in  the  proposition  :  "  the  Ego  determines  itself  in 
part,  and  is  determined  in  part."  Both,  however,  should  be  con- 
sidered as  one  and  the  same.  Hence  more  accurately  :  as  many 
parts  of  reality  as  the  Ego  posits  in  itself,  so  many  parts  of  nega- 
tion does  it  posit  in  the  non-Ego ;  and  as  many  parts  of  reality 


FICHTE. 


291 


as  tlie  Ego  posits  in  tlie  non-Ego,  so  many  parts  of  negation  does 
it  posit  in  itself.  This  determination  is  reciprocal  determination, 
or  reciprocal  action.  Thus  Fichte  deduces  the  last  of  the  three 
categories  under  Kant's  general  category  of  relation.  In  a  simi- 
lar way  (viz.,  by  finding  a  synthesis  for  apparent  contradictions), 
he  deduces  the  two  other  categories  of  this  class,  viz.,  that  of 
cause,  and  that  of  substance.  The  process  is  thus  :  So  far  as  the 
Ego  is  determined,  and  therefore  passive,  has  the  non-Ego  reali- 
ty. The  category  of  reciprocal  determination,  to  which  we  may 
ascribe  indifferently  either  of  the  two  sides,  reality  or  negation, 
may,  more  strictly  taken,  imply  that  the  Ego  is  passive,  and  the 
non-Ego  active.  The  notion  which  expresses  this  relation  is  that 
of  causality.  That,  to  which  activity  is  ascribed,  is  called  cause 
(primal  reality),  and  that  to  which  passiveness  is  ascribed,  is 
called  effect;  both,  conceived  in  connection,  may  be  termed 
a  working.  On  the  other  side,  the  Ego  determines  itself.  Here- 
in is  a  contradiction ;  ( 1 )  the  Ego  determines  itself ;  it  is  there- 
fore that  which  determines,  and  is  thus  active ;  (2)  it  determines 
itself;  it  is  therefore  that  which  becomes  determined,  and  is  thus 
passive.  Thus  in  one  respect  and  in  one  action  both  reality  and 
negation  are  ascribed  to  it.  To  resolve  this  contradiction,  we 
must  find  a  mode  of  action  which  is  activity  and  passiveness  in 
one ;  the  Ego  must  determine  its  passiveness  through  activity, 
and  its  activity  through  passiveness.  This  solution  is  attained  by 
aid  of  the  conception  of  quantity.  In  the  E'go  all  reality  is  first 
of  all  posited  as  absolute  quantum,  as  absolute  totality,  and  thus 
far  the  Ego  may  be  compared  to  a  greatest  circle  which  contains 
all  the  rest.  A  definite  quantum  of  activity,  or  a  limited  sphere 
within  this  greatest  circle  of  activity,  is  indeed  a  reality  ;  but 
when  compared  with  the  totality  of  activity,  is  it  also  a  negation 
of  the  totality  or  passiveness.  Here  we  have  found  the  media- 
tion sought  for  ;  it  lies  in  the  notion  of  substance.  In  so  far  as 
the  Ego  is  considered  as  the  whole  circle,  embracing  the  totality 
of  all  realities,  is  it  substance ;  but  so  far  as  it  becomes  posited 
in  a  determinate  sphere  of  this  circle,  is  it  accidental.  No  acci- 
dence is  conceivable  without  substance ;  for,  in  order  to  know 


292 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


that  any  thing  is  a  definite  reality,  it  must  first  be  referred  to 
reality  in  general,  or  to  substance.  In  every  change  we  think  of 
substance  in  the  universal ;  accidence  is  something  specific  (de- 
terminate), which  changes  with  every  changing  cause.  There  is 
originally  hid  one  substance,  the  Ego  ;  in  this  one  substance  all 
possible  accidents,  and  therefore  all  possible  realities,  are  posited. 
The  Ego  alone  is  the  absolutely  infinite.  The  Ego,  as  thinking 
and  as  acting,  indicates  a  limitation.  The  Fichtian  theory  is  ac- 
cordingly Spinozism,  only  (as  Jacobi  strikingly  called  it)  a  re- 
versed and  idealistic  Spinozism. 

Let  us  look  back  a  moment.  The  objectivity  which  Kant 
had  allowed  to  exist  Fichte  has  destroyed.  There  is  only  the 
Ego.  But  the  Ego  presupposes  a  non-Ego,  and  therefore  a  kind 
of  object.  How  the  Ego  comes  to  posit  such  an  object,  must 
the  theoretical  Theory  of  Science  now  proceed  to  show. 

There  are  two  extreme  views  respecting  the  relation  of  the 
Ego  to  the  non-Ego,  according  as  we  start  from  the  conception 
of  cause,  or  that  of  substance.  (1)  Starting  from  the  concep- 
tion of  cause,  we  have  posited  through  the  passiveness  of  the 
Ego  an  activity  of  the  non-Ego.  This  passiveness  of  the  Ego 
must  have  some  ground.  This  cannot  lie  in  the  Ego,  which  in 
itself  posits  only  activity.  Consequently  it  lies  in  the  non-Ego. 
Here  the  distinction  between  action  and  passion  is  apprehended, 
not  simply  as  quantitative  (i.  e.,  viewing  the  passiveness  as  a  di- 
minished activity),  but  the  passion  is  in  quality  opposed  to  the 
action ;  a  presupposed  activity  of  the  non-Ego  is,  therefore,  a 
real  ground  of  the  passiveness  in  the  Ego.  (2)  Starting  from 
the  conception  of  substance,  we  have  posited  a  passiveness  of  the 
Ego  through  its  own  activity.  Here  the  passiveness  in  respect 
of  quality  is  the  same  as  activity,  it  being  only  a  diminished  ac- 
tivity. While,  therefore,  according  to  the  first  view,  the  passive 
Ego  has  a  ground  distinct  in  quality  from  the  Ego,  and  thus  a 
real  ground,  yet  here  its  ground  is  only  a  diminished  activity  of 
the  Ego,  distinct  only  in  quantity  from  the  Ego,  and  is  thus  an 
ideal  ground.  The  former  view  is  dogmatic  realism,  the  latter 
is  dogmatic  idealism.    The  latter  aflirms  :  all  reality  of  the  non- 


FICHTE. 


203 


Ego  is  only  a  reality  given  it  from  tlie  Ego  ;  the  former  declares  : 
nothing  can  be  given,  unless  there  be  something  to  receive,  unless 
an  independent  reality  of  the  non-Ego,  as  thing  in  itself,  be  pre- 
supposed. Both  views  present  thus  a  contradiction,  which  can 
only  be  removed  by  a  new  synthesis.  Fichte  attempted  this  syn- 
thesis of  idealism  and  realism,  by  bringing  out  a  mediating  sys- 
tem of  critical  idealism.  For  this  purpose  he  sought  to  show 
that  the  ideal  ground  and  the  real  ground  are  one  and  the  same. 
Neither  is  the  simple  activity  of  the  Ego  a  ground  for  the  reality 
of  the  non-Ego,  nor  is  the  simple  activity  of  the  non-Ego  a 
ground  for  the  passiveness  in  the  Ego.  Both  must  be  conceived 
together  in  this  way,  viz.,  the  activity  of  the  Ego  meets  a  hin- 
drance^ which  is  set  up  against  it,  not  without  some  assistance  of 
the  Ego,  and  which  circumscribes  and  reflects  in  itself  this  activ- 
ity of  the  Ego,  The  hindrance  is  found  when  the  subjective 
can  be  no  farther  extended,  and  the  expanding  activity  of  the 
Ego  is  driven  back  into  itself,  producing  as  its  result  self-limita- 
tion. What  we  call  objects  are  nothing  other  than  the  different 
impinging  of  the  activity  of  the  Ego  on  some  inconceivable  hin- 
drance, and  these  determinations  of  the  Ego,  we  carry  over  to 
something  external  to  ourselves,  and  represent  them  to  ourselves 
as  space  filling  matter.  That  which  Fichte  calls  a  hindrance 
through  the  non-Ego,  is  thus  in  fact  the  same  as  Kant  calls  thing 
essentially,  the  only  difference  being  that  with  Fichte  it  is  made 
subjective.  From  this  point  Fichte  then  deduces  the  subjective 
activities  of  the  Ego,  which  mediate,  or  seek  to  mediate,  theoret- 
ically, the  Ego  with  the  non-Ego — as  imagination,  representation 
sensation,  intuition,  feeling),  understanding,  faculty  of  judgment, 
reason ;  and  in  connection  with  this  he  brought  out  the  subjective 
projections  of  the  intuition,  space,  and  time. 

We  have  now  reached  the  third  part  of  the  Theory  of  Sci- 
ence, viz.,  the  foundation  of  the  practical.  We  have  seen  that 
the  Ego  represents.  But  that  it  may  represent  does  not  depend 
upon  the  Ego  alone,  but  is  determined  by  something  external  to 
it.  We  could  in  no  way  conceive  of  a  representation,  except 
through  the  presupposition  that  the  Ego  finds  some  hindrance  to 


294 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


its  undetermined  and  unlimited  activity.  Accordingly  the  Ego, 
as  intelligence,  is  universally  dependent  upon  an  indefinite,  and 
hitherto  wholly  indefinable  non-Ego,  and  only  through  and  by 
means  of  such  non-Ego,  is  it  intelligence.  A  finite  being  is  only 
finite  as  intelligence.  These  limits,  however,  we  shall  break 
through.  The  practical  law  which  unites  the  finite  Ego  with  the 
infinite,  can  depend  upon  nothing  external  to  ourselves.  The 
Ego,  according  to  all  its  determinations,  should  be  posited  abso- 
lutely through  itself,  and  hence  should  be  wholly  independent  of 
every  possible  non-Ego.  Consequently,  the  absolute  Ego  and 
the  intelligent  Ego,  both  of  which  should  constitute  but  one,  are 
opposed  to  each  other.  This  contradiction  is  obviated,  when  we 
see  that  because  the  absolute  Ego  is  capable  of  no  passiveness, 
but  is  absolute  activity,  therefore  the  Ego  determines,  through  it- 
self, that  hitherto  unknown  non-Ego,  to  which  the  hindrance  has 
been  ascribed.  The  limits  which  the  Ego,  as  theoretic,  has  set 
over  against  itself  in  the  non-Ego,  it  must,  as  practical,  seek  to 
destroy,  and  absorb  again  the  non-Ego  in  itself  (or  conceive  it  as 
the  self-limitation  of  the  Ego).  The  Kantian  primacy  of  the 
practical  reason  is  here  made  a  truth.  The  transition  of  the 
theoretical  part  into  the  practical,  the  necessity  of  advancing 
from  the  one  to  the  other,  Fichte  represents  more  closely  thus : — 
The  theoretical  Theory  of  Science  had  to  do  with  the  mediation 
of  the  Ego,  and  the  non-Ego.  For  this  end  it  introduced  one 
connecting  link  after  another,  without  ever  attaining  its  end. 
Then  enters  the  reason  with  the  absolute  and  decisive  word  : 
"  there  ought  to  be  no  non-Ego,  since  the  non-Ego  can  in  no  way 
be  united  with  the  Ego ;  "  and  with  this  the  knot  is  cut,  though 
not  untied.  Thus  it  is  the  incongruity  between  the  absolute 
/practical)  Ego,  and  the  finite  (intelligent)  Ego,  which  is  carried 
over  beyond  the  theoretical  province  into  the  practical.  True, 
this  incongruity  does  not  wholly  disappear,  even  in  the  practical 
province,  where  the  act  is  only  an  infinite  striving  to  surpass  the 
limits  of  the  non-Ego.  The  Ego,  so  far  as  it  is  practical,  has, 
indeed,  the  tendency  to  pass  beyond  the  actual  world,  and  estab- 
lish an  ideal  world,  as  it  would  be  were  every  reality  posited  by 


nCHTE. 


295 


the  absolute  Ego ;  but  this  striving  is  always  confined  to  the 
finite  partly  through  itself,  because  it  goes  out  towards  objects, 
and  objects  are  finite,  and  partly  through  the  resistance  of  the 
sensible  world.  We  ought  to  seek  to  reach  the  infinite,  but  we 
cannot  do  it ;  this  striving  and  inability  is  the  impress  of  our  des- 
tiny for  eternity. 

Thus — and  in  these  words  Fichte  brings  together  the  result  of 
the  Theory  of  Science — the  whole  being  of  finite  rational  natures 
is  comprehended  and  exhausted :  an  original  idea  of  our  abso- 
lute being ;  an  effort  to  reflect  upon  our^^elves,  in  order  to  gain 
this  idea ;  a  limitation,  not  of  this  striving,  but  of  our  own  exist- 
ence, which  first  becomes  actual  through  this  limitation,  or 
through  an  opposite  principle,  a  non-Ego,  or  our  finiteness  ;  a  self- 
consciousness,  and  especially  a  consciousness  of  our  practical 
strivings ;  a  determination  accordingly  of  our  representations, 
and  through  these  of  our  actions ;  a  constant  widening  of  our 
limits  into  the  infinite. 

2.  Fichte's  Practical  Philosophy. — The  principles  which 
Fichte  had  developed  in  his  Theory  of  Science  he  applied  to 
practical  life,  especially  to  the  theory  of  rights  and  morals.  He 
sought  to  deduce  here  every  thing  with  methodical  rigidness, 
without  admitting  any  thing  which  could  not  be  proved  from 
experience.  Thus,  in  the  theory  of  rights  and  of  morals,  he  will 
not  presuppose  a  plurality  of  persons,  but  first  deduces  this  :  even 
that  the  man  has  a  body  is  first  demonstrated,  though,  to  be  sure, 
not  stringently. 

The  Theory  of  Bights  (the  rights  of  nature)  Fichte  founds 
upon  the  conception  of  the  individual.  First,  he  deduces  the 
conception  of  rights,  and  as  follows  : — A  finite  rational  being  can- 
not posit  itself  without  ascribing  to  itself  a  free  activity.  Through 
this  positing  of  its  faculties  to  a  free  activity,  this  rational  being 
posits  an  external  world  of  sense,  for  it  can  ascribe  to  itself  no 
activity  till  it  has  posited  an  object  towards  which  this  activity 
may  be  directed.  Still  farther,  this  free  activity  of  a  rational  be- 
ing presupposes  other  rational  beings,  for  without  these  it  would 
never  be  conscious  that  it  was  free.    We  have  therefore  a  plu- 


296 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


rality  of  free  individuals,  each  one  of  whom  has  a  sphere  of  free 
activity.  This  co-existence  of  free  individuals  is  not  possible 
without  a  relation  of  rights.  Since  no  one  with  freedom  passes 
beyond  his  sphere,  and  each  one  therefore  limits  himself,  they  recog- 
nize each  other  as  rational  and  free.  This  relation  of  a  reciprocal 
acting  through  intelligence  and  freedom  between  rational  beings, 
according  to  which  each  one  has  his  freedom  limited  by  the  con- 
ception of  the  possibility  of  the  other's  freedom,  under  the  con- 
dition also  that  this  other  limits  his  own  freedom  also  through 
that  of  the  first,  is  called  a  relation  of  rights.  The  supreme 
maxim  of  a  theory  of  rights  is  therefore  this  :  limit  thy  freedom 
through  the  conception  of  the  freedom  of  every  other  person  with 
whom  thou  canst  be  connected.  After  Fichte  has  attempted  the 
application  of  this  conception  of  rights,  and  ior  this  end  has  de- 
duced the  corporeity,  the  anthropological  side  of  man,  he  passes 
over  to  a  proper  theory  of  rights.  The  theory  of  rights  may  be 
divided  into  three  parts.  (1)  Rights  which  belong  to  the  simple 
conception  of  person  are  called  original  rights.  The  original 
right  is  the  absolute  right  of  the  person  to  be  only  a  cause  in  the 
sensible  world,  though  he  may  be  absolutely  (in  other  relations 
than  to  the  sense)  an  effect.  In  this  are  contained,  (a)  the  right 
of  personal  (bodily)  freedom,  and  (h)  the  right  of  property.  But 
every  relation  of  rights  between  individual  persons  is  conditioned 
through  each  one's  recognition  of  the  rights  of  the  other.  Each 
one  must  limit  the  quantum  of  his  free  acts  for  the  sake  of  the 
freedom  of  the  other,  and  only  so  far  as  the  other  has  respect  to 
my  freedom  need  I  have  regard  to  his.  In  case,  therefore,  the 
other  does  not  respect  my  original  rights,  some  mechanical  neces- 
sity must  be  sought  in  order  to  secure  the  rights  of  person,  and 
this  involves  (2)  the  Fdght  of  Coercion.  The  laws  of  punishment 
have  their  end  in  securing  that  the  opposite  of  that  which  is  in- 
tended shall  follow  every  unrighteous  aim,  that  every  vicious  pur- 
pose shall  be  destroyed,  and  the  right  in  its  integrity  be  estab- 
lished. To  establish  such  a  law  of  coercion,  and  to  secure  a  uni- 
versal coercive  power,  the  free  individuals  must  enter  into  cove- 
nant among  themselves.    Such  a  covenant  is  only  possible  on  the 


FICHTE. 


297 


ground  of  a  common  nature.  Natural  right,  i.  e.  the  rightful  rela- 
tion between  man  and  man,  presupposes  thus  (3)  a  civil  right,  viz., 
(a)  a  free  covenant,  a  compact  of  citizens  by  which  the  free  individ- 
uals guarantee  to  each  other  their  reciprocal  rights ;  {h)  positive 
laws,  a  civil  legislation,  through  which  the  common  will  of  all  be- 
comes law ;  (c)  an  executive  force,  a  civil  power  which  executes 
the  common  will,  and  in  which,  therefore,  the  private  will  and  the 
common  will  are  synthetically  united.  The  particular  view  of 
Fichte's  theory  of  rights  is  this :  on  the  one  side  there  is  the  state 
as  reason  demands  (philosophical  theory  of  rights),  and  on  the 
other  side  the  state  as  it  actually  is  (theory  of  positive  rights  and 
of  the  state).  But  now  comes  up  the  problem,  to  make  the  actual 
state  ever  more  and  more  conformable  to  the  state  of  reason. 
The  science  which  has  this  approximation  for  its  aim,  is  polity. 
We  can  demand  of  no  actual  state  a  perfect  conformity  to  the 
idea  of  a  state.  Every  state  constitution  is  according  to  right,  if 
it  only  leaves  possible  an  advancement  to  a  better  state,  and  the 
only  constitution  wholly  contrary  to  right  is  that  whose  end  is  to 
hold  every  thing  just  as  it  is. 

The  absolute  Ego  of  the  Theory  of  Science  is  separated  in  the 
Theory  of  Rights  into  an  infinite  number  of  persons  with  rights  : 
to  bring  it  out  again  in  its  unity  is  the  problem  of  Ethics.  Right 
and  morals  are  essentially  different.  Right  is  the  external  neces- 
sity to  omit  or  to  do  something  in  order  not  to  infringe  upon  the 
freedom  of  another ;  the  inner  necessity  to  do  or  omit  some- 
thing wholly  independent  of  external  ends,  constitutes  the  moral 
nature  of  man.  And  as  the  theory  of  rights  arose  from  the  conflict 
of  the  impulse  of  freedom  in  one  subject  with  the  impulse  of  free- 
dom in  another  subject,  so  does  the  theory  of  morals  or  ethics  arise 
from  such  a  conflict,  which,  in  the  present  case,  is  not  external  but 
internal,  between  two  impulses  in  one  and  the  same  person.  (1)  The 
rational  being  is  impelled  towards  absolute  independence,  and 
strives  after  freedom  for  the  sake  of  freedom.  This  fundamental 
impulse  may  be  called  the  pure  impulse,  and  it  furnishes  the 
formal  principle  of  ethics,  the  principle  of  absolute  autonomy,  of 
absolute  indeterminableness  through  anything  external  to  the  Ego. 
13* 


298 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


But  (2)  as  the  rational  being  is  actually  empirical  and  finite,  as  it 
by  nature  posits  over  against  itself  a  non-Ego  and  posits  itself  as 
corporeal,  so  there  is  found  beside  the  pure  impulse  another,  the 
impulse  of  nature,  which  makes  for  its  end  not  freedom  but  enjoy- 
ment. This  impulse  of  nature  furnishes  the  material,  utilitarian 
(eudoemoniacal)  principle  of  striving  after  a  connected  enjoyment. 
Both  impulses,  which  from  a  transcendental  standpoint  are  one 
and  the  same  original  impulse  of  the  human  being,  strive  after 
unity,  and  furnish  a  third  impulse  which  is  a  mingling  of  the  two. 
The  pure  impulse  gives  the  form,  and  the  natural  impulse  the 
content  of  an  action.  It  is  true  that  sensuous  objects  will  be 
chosen,  but  by  virtue  of  the  pure  impulse  these  are  modified  so  as 
to  conform  to  the  absolute  Ego.  This  mingled  impulse  is  now  the 
moral  impulse.  It  mediates  the  pure  and  the  natural  impulse. 
But  since  these  two  lie  infinitely  apart,  the  approximation  of  the 
natural  to  the  pure  impulse  is  an  infinite  progression.  The  intent 
in  an  action  is  directed  towards  a  complete  freeing  from  nature, 
and  it  is  only  the  result  of  our  limitation  that  the  act  should  re- 
main still  conformable  to  the  natural  impulse.  Since  the  Ego 
can  never  be  independent  so  long  as  it  is  Ego,  the  final  aim  of  the 
rational  being  lies  in  infinity.  There  must  be  a  course  in  whose 
progress  the  Ego  can  conceive  itself  as  approximating  towards  ab- 
solute independence.  This  course  is  determined  in  infinity  in  the 
idea ;  there  is,  therefore,  no  possible  case  in  which  it  is  not  deter- 
mined what  the  pure  impulse  should  demand.  We  might  name 
this  course  the  moral  determination  (destiny)  of  the  finite  rational 
being.  The  principle  of  ethics  is,  therefore  :  Alivays  fulfil  thy 
destiny !  That  which  is  in  every  moment  conformable  to  our 
moral  destiny,  is  at  the  same  time  demanded  by  our  natural  im- 
pulse, though  it  does  not  follow  that  every  thing  which  the  latter 
demands  agrees  therefore  with  the  former.  I  ought  to  act  only 
when  conscious  that  something  is  duty,  and  I  ought  to  discharge 
the  duty  for  its  own  sake.  The  blind  motives  of  sympathy,  love 
of  mankind,  &c.,  have  not,  as  mere  impulses  of  nature,  morality. 
The  moral  impulse  has  causality  as  having  none,  for  it  demands 
be  free  !    Through  the  conception  of  the  absolute  ought,  is  the 


FICHTE. 


299 


rational  being  absolutely  independent,  and  is  represented  thus 
only  when  acting  from  duty.  The  formal  condition  of  the  mo- 
rality of  our  actions,  is :  act  always  according  to  the  best  con- 
viction of  thy  duty ;  or,  act  according  to  thy  conscience.  The 
absolute  criterion  of  the  correctness  of  our  conviction  of  duty  is 
a  feeling  of  truth  and  certainty.  This  immediate  feeling  never 
deceives,  for  it  only  exists  with  the  perfect  harmony  of  our  em- 
pirical Ego  with  that  which  is  pure  and  original.  From  this 
point  Fichte  developes  his  particular  ethics,  or  theory  of  duties, 
which,  however,  we  must  here  pass  by. 

Fichte's  theory  of  religion  is  developed  in  the  above  men- 
tioned treatise  :  "  On  the  ground  of  our  faith  in  a  divine  gov- 
ernjnent  of  the  world^''  and  in  the  writings  which  he  subsequently 
put  forth  in  its  defence.  The  moral  government  of  the  world, 
says  Fichte,  we  assume  to  be  the  divine.  This  divine  government 
becomes  living  and  actual  in  us  through  right-doing :  it  is  pre- 
supposed in  every  one  of  our  actions  which  are  only  performed  in 
the  presupposition  that  the  moral  end  is  attainable  in  the  world 
of  sense.  The  faith  in  such  an  order  of  the  world  comprises  the 
whole  of  faith,  for  this  living  and  active  moral  order  is  God ;  we 
need  no  other  God,  and  can  comprehend  no  other.  There  is  no 
ground  in  the  reason  to  go  out  of  this  moral  order  of  the  world, 
and  by  concluding  from  design  to  a  designer,  affirm  a  separate  being 
as  its  cause.  Is,  then,  this  order  an  accidental  one  ?  It  is  the 
absolute  First  of  all  objective  knowledge.  But  now  if  you  should 
be  allowed  to  draw  the  conclusion  that  there  is  a  God  as  a  separate 
being,  what  have  you  gained  by  this  ?  This  being  should  be  dis- 
tinct from  you  and  the  world,  it  should  work  in  the  latter  accord- 
ing to  conceptions ;  it  should,  therefore,  be  capable  of  conceptions, 
and  possess  personality  and  consciousness.  But  what  do  you  call 
personality  and  consciousness  ?  Certainly  that  which  you  have 
found  in  yourself,  which  you  have  learned  to  know  in  yourself,  and 
which  you  have  characterized  with  such  a  name.  But  that  you 
cannot  conceive  of  this  without  limitation  and  finiteness,  you 
might  see  by  the  slightest  attention  to  the  construction  of  this 
conception.    By  attaching,  therefore,  such  a  predicate  to  this  be- 


300 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


ing,  you  bring  it  down  to  a  finite,  and  make  it  a  being  like  your- 
self; you  have  not  conceived  God  as  you  intended  to  do,  but  have 
only  multiplied  yourself  in  thought.  The  conception  of  God,  as 
a  separate  substance,  is  impossible  and  contradictory.  God  has 
essential  existence  only  as  such  a  moral  order  of  the  world.  Every 
belief  in  a  divine  being,  which  contains  any  thing  more  than  the 
conception  of  the  moral  order  of  the  world,  is  an  abomination  to 
me,  and  in  the  highest  degree  unworthy  of  a  rational  being. — Re- 
ligion and  morality  are,  on  this  standpoint,  as  on  that  of  Kant, 
naturally  one ;  both  are  an  apprehending  of  the  supersensible,  the 
former  through  action  and  the  latter  through  faith.  This  "  Reli- 
gion of  joyous  right- doing,"  Fichte  farther  carried  out  in  the 
writings  which  he  put  forth  to  rebut  the  charge  of  atheism.  He 
affirms  that  nothing  but  the  principles  of  the  new  philosophy  could 
restore  the  degenerate  religious  sense  among  men,  and  bring  to 
light  the  inner  essence  of  the  Christian  doctrine.  Especially  he 
seeks  to  show  this  in  his  Appeal  "  to  the  public.  In  this  he 
says  :  to  furnish  an  answer  to  the  questions  :  what  is  good  ?  what 
is  true  ?  is  the  aim  of  my  philosophical  system.  "We  must  start 
with  the  affirmation  that  there  is  something  absolutely  true  and 
good ;  that  there  is  something  which  can  hold  and  bind  the  free 
flight  of  thought.  There  is  a  voice  in  man  which  cannot  be 
silenced,  which  affirms  that  there  is  a  duty,  and  that  it  must  be 
done  simply  for  its  own  sake.  Resting  on  this  basis,  there  is 
opened  to  us  an  entirely  new  world  in  our  being ;  we  attain  a 
higher  existence,  which  is  independent  of  all  nature,  and  is 
grounded  simply  in  ourselves.  I  would  call  this  absolute  self-sat- 
isfaction of  the  reason,  this  perfect  freedom  from  all  dependence, 
blessedness.  As  the  single  but  unerring  means  of  blessedness,  my 
conscience  points  me  to  the  fulfilment  of  duty.  I  am,  therefore, 
impressed  by  the  unshaken  conviction,  that  there  is  a  rule  and 
fixed  order,  according  to  which  the  purely  moral  disposition  neces- 
sarily makes  blessed.  It  is  absolutely  necessary,  and  it  is  the 
essential  element  in  religion,  that  the  man  who  maintains  the  dig- 
nity of  his  reason,  will  repose  on  the  faith  in  this  order  of  a  moral 
world,  will  regard  each  one  of  his  duties  as  an  enactment  of  this 


FICHTE. 


301 


order,  and  will  joyfully  submit  himself  to,  and  find  bliss  in,  every 
consequence  of  his  duty.  Thou  shalt  know  God  if  I  can  only 
beget  in  thee  a  dutiful  character,  and  though  to  others  of  us  thou 
mayest  seem  to  be  still  in  the  world  of  sense,  yet  for  thyself  art 
thou  already  a  partaker  of  eternal  life. 

II.  The  later  form  of  Fichte's  Philosophy. — Every  thing 
of  importance  which  Fichte  accomplished  as  a  speculative  philoso- 
pher, is  contained  in  the  Theory  of  Science  as  above  considered. 
Subsequently,  after  his  departure  from  Jena,  his  system  gradually 
became  modified,  and  from  difi"erent  causes.  Partly,  because  it 
was  difficult  to  maintain  the  rigid  idealism  cf  the  Theory  of 
Science ;  partly,  because  Schelling's  natural  philosophy,  which 
now  appeared,  was  not  without  an  influence  upon  Fichte's  think- 
ing, though  the  latter  denied  this  and  became  involved  in  a  bitter 
controversy  with  Schelling;  and,  partly,  his  outward  relations, 
which  were  far  from  being  happy,  contributed  to  modify  his  view 
of  the  world.  Fichte's  writings,  in  this  second  period,  are  for  the 
most  part  popular,  and  intended  for  a  mixed  class  of  readers- 
They  all  bear  the  impress  of  his  acute  mind,  and  of  his  exalted 
manly  character,  but  lack  the  originality  and  the  scientific  sequence 
of  his  earlier  productions.  Those  of  them  which  are  scientific 
do  not  satisfy  the  demands  which  he  himself  had  previously  laid 
down  with  so  much  strictness,  both  for  himself  and  others,  in 
respect  of  genetic  construction  and  philosophical  method.  His 
doctrine  at  this  time  seems  rather  as  a  web,  of  his  old  subjective 
idealistic  conceptions  and  the  newly  added  objective  idealism,  so 
loosely  connected  that  Schelling  might  call  it  the  completest 
syncretism  aud  eclecticism.  His  new  standpoint  is  chiefly  distin- 
guished from  his  old  by  his  attempt  to  merge  his  subjective  ideal- 
ism into  an  objective  pantheism  (in  accordance  with  the  new 
Platonism),  to  transmute  the  Ego  of  his  earlier  philosophy  into 
the  absolute,  or  the  thought  of  God.  God,  whose  conception  he 
had  formerly  placed  only  at  the  end  of  his  system,  in  the  doubt- 
ful form  of  a  moral  order  of  the  world,  becomes  to  him  now  the 
absolute  beginning,  and  single  element  of  his  philosophy.  This 
gave  to  his  philosophy  an  entirely  new  color.    The  moral  severity 


302 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


gives  place  to  a  religious  mildness ;  instead  of  the  Ego  and  the 
Ought,  life  and  love  are  now  the  chief  features  of  his  philosophy ; 
in  place  of  the  exact  dialectic  of  the  Theory  of  Science,  he  now 
makes  choice  of  mystical  and  metaphorical  modes  of  expression. 

This  second  period  of  Fichte's  philosophy  is  especially  charac- 
terized by  its  inclination  to  religion  and  Christianity,  as  exhibited 
most  prominently  in  the  essay  "  Direction  to  a  Blessed  Life^ 
Fichte  here  affirms  that  his  new  doctrine  is  exactly  that  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  especially  of  the  Gospel  according  to  John.  He 
would  make  this  gospel  alone  the  clear  foundation  of  Christian 
truth,  since  the  other  apostles  remained  half  Jews  after  their  con- 
version, and  adhered  to  the  fundamental  error  of  Judaism,  that 
the  world  had  a  creation  in  time.  Fichte  lays  great  weight  upon 
the  first  part  of  John's  prologue,  where  the  formation  of  the  world 
out  of  nothing  is  confuted,  and  a  true  view  laid  down  of  a  revela- 
tion co-eternal  with  Grod,  and  necessarily  given  with  his  being. 
That  which  this  prologue  says  of  the  incarnation  of  the  Logos  in 
the  person  of  Jesus,  has,  according  to  Fichte,  only  a  historic 
validity.  The  absolute  and  eternally  true  standpoint  is,  that  at 
all  times,  and  in  every  one,  without  exception,  who  is  vitally  sen- 
sible of  his  union  with  God,  and  who  actually  and  in  fact  yields 
up  his  whole  individual  life  to  the  divine  life  within  him, — the 
eternal  word  becomes  flesh  in  the  same  way  as  in  Jesus  Christ 
and  holds  a  personal,  sensible,  and  human  existence.  The  whole 
communion  of  believers,  the  first-born  alike  with  the  later  born, 
coincides  in  the  Godhead,  the  common  source  of  life  for  all.  And 
so  then,  Christianity  having  gained  its  end,  disappears  again  in 
the  eternal  truth,  and  affirms  that  every  man  should  come  to  a 
union  with  God.  So  long  as  man  desires  to  be  himself  any  thing 
whatsoever,  God  does  not  come  to  him,  for  no  man  can  become 
God.  But  just  so  soon  as  he  purely,  wholly,  and  radically  gives 
up  himself,  God  alone  remains,  and  is  all  and  in  all.  The  man 
himself  can  beget  no  God,  but  he  can  give  up  himself  as  a  proper 
negation,  and  thus  he  disappears  in  God. 

The  result  of  his  advanced  philosophizing,  Fichte  has  briefly 


HERBART. 


303 


and  clearly  comprehended  in  the  following  lines,  which  we  extract 
from  two  posthumous  sonnets  : 

The  Eternal  One 
Lives  in  my  life  and  sees  in  my  beholding. 
Nought  is  but  God,  and  God  is  nought  but  life. 
Clearly  the  vail  of  things  rises  before  thee  ; 
It  is  thyself,  what  though  the  mortal  die 
And  hence  there  lives  but  God  in  thine  endeavors , 
If  thou  -wilt  look  through  that  which  lives  beyond  this  death, 
The  vail  of  things  shall  seem  to  thee  as  vail, 
And  imveiled  thou  shalt  look  upon  the  life  divine. 


SECTION  XLII. 

HERBAKT. 

A  peculiar,  and  in  many  respects  noticeable,  carrying  out  of 
the  Kantian  philosophy,  was  attempted  by  JoJiann  Friedrich 
Herhart^  who  was  born  at  Oldenburg  in  1776,  chosen  professor 
of  philosophy  in  Grottingen  in  1805 ;  made  Kant's  successor  at 
Konigsberg  in  1808,  and  recalled  to  Gottingen  in  1838,  where  he 
died  in  18-il.  His  philosophy,  instead  of  making,  like  most  other 
systems,  for  its  principle,  an  idea  of  the  reason,  followed  the  direc- 
tion of  Kant,  and  expended  itself  mainly  in  a  critical  examina- 
tion of  the  subjective  experience.  It  is  essentially  a  criticism, 
but  with  results  which  are  peculiar,  and  which  differ  wholly  from 
those  of  Kant.  Its  fundamental  position  in  the  history  of  phi- 
losophy is  an  isolated  one ;  instead  of  regarding  antecedent  sys- 
tems as  elements  'of  a  true  philosophy,  it  looks  upon  almost  all  of 
them  as  failures.  It  is  especially  hostile  to  the  post-Kantian  Ger- 
man philosophy,  and  most  of  all  to  Schelling's  philosophy  of  na- 
ture, in  which  it  could  only  behold  a  phantom  and  a  delusion ; 
sooner  than  come  in  contact  with  this,  it  would  join  Hegelianism, 
of  which  it  is  the  opposite  pole.  We  will  give  a  brief  exposition 
f  its  prominent  thoughts. 


304 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


1.  The  Basis  and  Starting-point  of  Philosophy  is,  accord 
ing  to  Herbart,  the  common  view  of  things,  or  a  knowledge  which 
shall  accord  with  experience.  A  philosophical  system  is  in  reali- 
ty nothing  but  an  attempt  by  which  a  thinker  strives  to  solve  cer- 
tain questions  which  present  themselves  before  him.  Every  ques- 
tion brought  up  in  philosophy  should  refer  itself  singly  and  solely 
to  that  which  is  given,  and  must  arise  from  this  source  alone,  be- 
cause there  is  no  other  original  field  of  certainty,  for  men,  than 
experience  alone.  Every  philosophy  should  begin  with  it.  The 
thinking  should  yield  itself  to  experience,  which  should  lead  it, 
and  not  be  led  by  it.  Experience,  therefore,  is  the  only  object 
and  basis  of  philosophy  ;  that  which  is  not  given  cannot  be  an  ob- 
ject of  thought,  and  it  is  impossible  to  establish  any  knowledge 
which  transcends  the  limits  of  experience. 

2.  The  first  act  of  Philosophy. — Though  the  material  fur- 
nished by  experience  is  the  basis  of  philosophy,  yet,  since  it  is 
furnished,  it  stands  outside  of  philosophy.  The  question  arises, 
what  is  the  first  act  or  beginning  of  philosophy  ?  The  thinking 
should  first  separate  itself  from  experience,  that  it  may  clearly 
see  the  difi&culties  of  its  undertaking.  The  beginning  of  philoso- 
phy, where  the  thinking  rises  above  that  which  is  given,  is  ac- 
cordingly doubt  or  scepticism.  Scepticism  is  twofold,  a  lower 
and  a  higher.  The  lower  scepticism  simply  doubts  that  things 
are  so  constituted  as  they  appear  to  us  to  be ;  the  higher  scepti- 
cism passes  beyond  the  form  of  tbe  phenomenon,  and  inquires 
whether  in  reality  any  thing  there  exists.  It  doubts  e.  g.  the  suc- 
cession in  time ;  it  asks  in  reference  to  the  forms  of  the  objects 
of  nature  which  exhibit  design,  whether  the  design  is  perceived, 
or  only  attached  to  them  in  the  thought,  &c.  Thus  the  problems 
which  form  the  content  of  metaphysics,  are  gradually  brought 
out.  The  result  of  scepticism  is  therefore  not  negative,  but  posi- 
tive. Doubt  is  nothing  but  the  thinking  upon  those  conceptions 
of  experience  which  are  the  material  of  philosophy.  Through  this 
reflection,  scepticism  leads  us  to  the  knowledge  that  these  con- 
ceptions of  experience,  though  they  refer  to  something  given,  yet 
contain  no  conceivable  content  free  from  logical  incongruities. 


HERBART. 


305 


3.  Remodelling  of  the  conceptions  of  experience. — Me- 
taphysics, according  to  Herbart,  is  the  science  of  that  which  is 
conceivable  in  experience.  Our  view  thus  far  has  been  a  twofold 
one.  On  the  one  side  we  hold  fast  to  the  opinion  that 
the  single  basis  of  philosophy  is  experience,  and  on  the  other  side, 
scepticism  has  shaken  the  credibility  of  experience.  The  point 
now  is  to  transform  this  scepticism  into  a  definite  knowledge  of 
metaphysical  problems.  Conceptions  from  experience  crowd  upon 
us,  which  cannot  be  thoughts,  i.  e.  they  may  indeed  be  thought  by 
the  ordinary  understanding,  but  this  thinking  is  obscure  and  con- 
fused, and  does  not  separate  nor  compare  opposing  characteristics. 
But  an  acute  process  of  thought,  a  logical  analysis,  will  find  in  the 
conceptions  of  experience  (e.g.  space,  time,  becoming,  motion,  &c.) 
contradictions  and  characteristics,  which  are  totally  inconsistent 
with  each  other.  What  now  is  to  be  done  ?  We  may  not  reject 
these  conceptions,  for  they  are  given,  and  beyond  the  given  we 
cannot  step ;  we  cannot  retain  them,  for  they  are  inconceivable  and 
cannot  logically  be  established.  The  only  way  of  escape  which 
remains  to  us  is  to  remodel  them.  To  remodel  the  conceptions  of 
experience,  to  eliminate  their  contradictions,  is  the  proper  act  of 
speculation.  Scepticism  has  brought  to  light  the  more  definite 
problems  which  involve  a  contradiction,  and  whose  solution  it 
therefore  belongs  to  metaphysics  to  attempt ;  the  most  important 
of  these  are  the  problems  of  inherence,  change,  and  the  Ego. 

The  relation  between  Herbart  and  Hegel  is  very  clear  at  this 
point.  Both  are  agreed  respecting  the  contradictory  nature  of 
the  determinations  of  thought,  and  the  conceptions  of  experience. 
But  from  this  point  they  separate.  It  is  the  nature  of  these  con- 
ceptions as  of  every  thing,  says  Hegel,  to  be  an  inner  contradic- 
tion ;  becoming,  for  instance,  is  essentially  the  unity  of  being,  and 
not  being,  &c.  This  is  impossible,  says  Herbart,  on  the  other 
side,  so  long  as  the  principle  of  contradiction  is  valid  ;  if  the  con- 
ceptions of  experience  contain  inner  contradictions,  this  is  not  the 
fault  of  the  objective  world,  but  of  the  representing  subject  who 
must  rectify  his  false  apprehension  by  remodelling  these  concep- 
tions, and  eliminating  the  contradiction.  Herbart  thus  charges  the 


306 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


philosophy  of  Hegel  with  empiricism,  because  it  receives  from  ex- 
perience these  contradictory  conceptions  unchanged,  and  not  only 
regards  these  as  established,  but  even  goes  so  far  as  to  metamor- 
phose logic  on  their  account,  and  this  simply  because  they  are 
given  in  experience,  though  their  contradictory  nature  is  clearly 
seen.  Hegel  and  Herbart  stand  related  to  each  other  as  Hera- 
clitus  and  Parmenides  {cf.  ^  ^  Yl.  and  VII.) 

4.  Herbart's  Reals. — From  this  point  Herbart  reaches  his 
"  reals  "  (Bealen)  as  follows  :  To  discover  the  contradictions,  he 
says,  in  all  our  conceptions  of  experience,  might  lead  us  to  abso- 
lute scepticism,  and  to  despair  of  the  truth.  But  here  we  re- 
member that  if  the  existence  of  every  thing  real  be  denied,  then 
the  appearance,  sensation,  representation,  and  thought  itself 
would  bo  destroyed.  We  perceive,  therefore,  just  as  strong  an 
indication  of  being  as  of  appearance.  We  cannot,  indeed,  as- 
cribe to  the  given  any  true  and  essential  being  per  se,  it  is  not 
per  se  alone,  but  only  on,  or  in,  or  through  something  other. 
The  truly  being  is  an  absolute  being,  which  as  such  excludes 
every  thing  relative  and  dependent ;  it  is  absolute  positio7i, 
which  it  is  not  for  us  first  to  posit,  but  only  to  recognize.  In  so 
far  as  this  being  is  attributed  to  any  thing,  this  latter  possesses 
reality.  The  truly  being  is,  therefore,  ever  a  quale,  a  something 
which  is  considered  as  being.  In  order  now  that  this  posited 
may  correspond  to  the  conditions  which  lie  in  the  conception  of 
absolute  position,  the  what  of  the  real  must  be  thought  (a)  as 
absolutely  positive  or  affirmative,  i.  e.  without  any  negation  or 
limitation,  which  might  destroy  again  the  absoluteness ;  (J)  as  ab- 
solutely simple,  i.  e.  in  no  way,  as  a  multiplicity  or  admitting  of 
inner  antitheses ;  (c)  as  indeterminate  by  any  conceptions  of  great- 
ness, i.  e.  not  as  a  quantum  which  may  be  divided  and  extended 
in  time  and  space  ;  hence,  also,  not  as  a  constant  greatness  or  con- 
tinuity. But  we  must  never  forget  that  this  being  or  this  absolute 
reality  is  not  simply  something  thought,  but  is  something  inde- 
pendent and  resting  on  itself,  and  hence  it  is  simply  to  be  recog- 
nized by  the  thinking.  The  conception  of  this  thinking  lies  at 
the  basis  of  all  Herbart's  metaphysics.    Take  an  example  of  this 


HERBART. 


307 


The  first  problem  to  he  solved  in  metaphysics  is  the  problem  of 
inhercneej  or  the  thing  with  its  characteristics.  Every  percepti- 
ble  thing  represents  itself  to  the  senses  as  a  complex  of  several 
characteristics.  But  all  the  attributes  of  a  thing  which  are  given 
in  perception  are  relative.  We  say  e.  g.  that  souni  is  a  property 
of  a  certain  body.  It  sounds — but  it  cannot  do  this  without  air ; 
what  now  becomes  of  this  property  in  a  space  without  air  ? 
Again,  we  say  that  a  body  is  heavy,  but  it  is  only  so  on  the 
earth.  Or  again,  that  a  body  is  colored,  but  light  is  necessary 
for  this  ;  what  now  becomes  of  such  a  property  in  darkness  ? 
Still  farther,  a  multiplicity  of  properties  is  incompatible  with  the 
unity  of  an  object.  If  you  ask  ivhat  is  this  thing,  you  are  an- 
swered with  the  sum  of  its  characteristics ;  it  is  soft,  white,  full- 
sounding,  heavy, — but  your  question  was  of  one,  not  of  many. 
The  answer  only  affirms  what  the  thing  has,  not  what  it  is. 
Moreover,  the  list  of  characteristics  is  always  incomplete.  The 
what  of  a  thing  can  therefore  lie  neither  in  the  individual  given 
properties,  nor  in  their  unity.  In  determining  what  a  thing  is, 
we  have  only  this  answer  remaining,  viz.,  the  thing  is  that  un- 
known, which  we  must  posit  before  we  can  posit  any  thing  as  ly- 
ing in  the  given  properties  ;  in  a  word,  it  is  the  substance.  For 
if,  in  order  to  see  what  the  thing  purely  and  essentially  is,  we 
take  away  the  characteristics  which  it  may  have,  we  find  that 
nothing  more  remains,  and  we  perceive  that  what  we  considered 
as  the  real  thing  was  only  a  complex  of  characteristics,  and  the 
union  of  these  in  one  whole.  But  since  every  appearance  indi- 
cates a  definite  reality,  and  thus  since  there  must  be  as  much  re- 
ality as  there  is  appearance,  we  have  to  consider  the  reality, 
which  lies  at  the  basis  of  the  thing,  with  its  characteristics,  as  a 
complex  of  many  simple  substances  or  monads,  and  whose  quality 
is  different  in  different  instances.  When  our  experience  has  led 
us  to  a  repeated  grouping  together  of  these  monads,  we  call  the 
group  a  thing.  Let  us  now  briefly  look  at  the  formation  of  those 
fundamental  conceptions  of  metaphysics,  which  involve  the  same 
thoughts  through  the  fundamental  conception  of  being.  First, 
there  is  the  conception  of  causality,  which  cannot  be  maintained 


308 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


in  its  ordinary  form.  All  that  we  can  perceive  in  the  act  is  sue* 
cession  in  time,  and  not  the  necessary  connection  of  cause  with 
effect.  The  cause  in  itself  can  be  neither  transcendent  nor  im- 
manent ;  it  cannot  be  transcendent,  because  a  real  influence  of 
one  real  thing  u-poB.  another,  contradicts  the  conception  of  the 
absolute  reality ;  nor  immanent,  for  then  the  substance  must  be 
thought  as  one  with  its  characteristics,  which  contradicts  the  in- 
vestigations concerning  a  thing  with  its  characteristics.  We  can 
just  as  little  find  in  the  conception  of  the  real  an  answer  to  the 
question,  how  one  determinate  being  can  be  brought  into  contact 
with  another,  for  the  real  is  the  absolute  unchangeable.  We  can 
therefore  only  explain  the  conception  of  causality  on  the  ground 
that  the  different  reals  which  lie  at  the  basis  of  the  characteris- 
tics are  conceived,  each  one  for  itself,  as  cause  of  the  phenome- 
non, there  being  just  as  many  causes  as  there  are  phenomena. 
The  problem  of  change,  is  intimately  connected  with  the  concep- 
tion of  cause.  Since,  however,  according  to  Herbart,  there  is  no 
inner  change,  no  self-determination,  no  becoming  and  no  life ;  since 
the  monads  are,  and  remain  in  themselves  unchangeable,  they  do 
not  therefore  become  different  in  respect  of  quality,  but  they  are 
originally  different  one  from  another,  and  each  one  exhibits  its 
equality  without  ever  any  change.  The  problem  of  change  can 
thus  only  be  solved  through  the  theory  of  the  disturbance  and 
self-preservation  of  these  essences.  But  if  that  which  we  call 
not  simply  an  apparent  but  an  actual  event,  in  the  essence  of  the 
monads,  may  be  reduced  to  a  "  self-preservation,"  as  the  last 
gleam  of  an  activity  and  life,  still  we  have  the  question  ever  re- 
maining, how  to  explain  the  appearance  of  change.  For  this  it 
is  necessary  to  bring  in  two  auxiliary  conceptions ;  first,  that  of 
accidental  views,  and  second,  that  of  intellectual  spaces.  The 
accidental  views,  an  expression  taken  from  mathematics,  signify, 
in  reference  to  the  problem  before  us  this  much,  viz.,  one  and  the 
same  conception  may  often  be  considered  in  very  different  rela- 
tions to  some  other  essence,  without  the  slightest  change  in  its 
own  essence,  e.  g.  a  straight  line  may  be  considered  as  radius  or 
as  tangent,  and  a  tone  as  harmonious  or  discordant.    By  help  of 


HERBART. 


309 


these  accidental  views,  we  may  now  regard  that  which  actually 
results  in  the  monad,  when  other  monads,  opposite  in  quality, 
come  in  contact  with  it,  as  on  the  one  side  an  actual  occurrence, 
though  on  the  other  side,  no  actual  change  can  be  imputed  to  the 
original  condition  of  the  monads  (a  gray  color,  e.  g.  seems  com- 
paratively white  by  the  side  of  black,  and  comparatively  black 
by  the  side  of  white,  without  changing  at  all  its  quality).  A 
further  auxiliary  conception  is  that  of  intellectual  space,  which 
arises  when  we  must  consider  these  essences  as  at  the  same  time 
together  and  not  together.  By  means  of  this  conception  we  can 
eliminate  the  contradictions  from  the  conception  of  movement. 
Lastly,  it  can  be  seen  that  the  conception  of  matter  and  that  of 
the  Ego  (in  psychologically  explaining  which,  the  rest  of  the 
metaphysics  is  occupied)  are,  like  the  preceding  ones,  no  less  con- 
tradictory in  themselves  than  they  are  irreconcilable  with  the 
fundamental  conception  of  the  real ;  for  neither  can  an  extended 
being,  like  matter,  be  formed  out  of  spaceless  monads — and  with 
matter,  therefore,  fall  also  the  ordinary  conceptions  of  space  and 
time — nor  can  we  admit,  without  transformation,  the  conception 
of  the  Ego,  since  it  exhibits  the  contradictory  conception  of  a 
thing  with  many  and  changing  characteristics  (conditions,  pow- 
ers, faculties,  &c.) 

We  are  reminded  by  Herbart's  "  reals  "  of  the  atomic  theory 
of  the  atomists  (cf.  §  IX.  2),  of  the  Eleatic  theory  of  the  one  be- 
ing {cf.  ^  YI.),  and  of  Leibnitz's  monadology.  His  reals  however 
are  distinguished  from  the  atoms  by  not  possessing  impenetrability. 
The  monads  of  Herbart  may  be  just  as  well  represented  in  the 
same  space  as  a  mathematical  point  may  be  conceived  as  accurate- 
ly coexisting  with  another  in  the  same  place.  In  this  respect  the 
"  real "  of  Herbart  has  a  far  greater  similarity  to  the  "  one  "  of  the 
Eleatics.  Both  are  simple,  and  to  be  conceived  in  intellectual 
spa>ces,  but  the  essential  difference  is,  that  Herbart's  substances  ex- 
ist in  numbers  distinct  from  one  another,  and  even  from  opposites 
among  themselves.  Herbart's  simple  quantities  have  already  been 
compared  to  the  monads  of  Leibnitz,  but  these  latter  have  essen- 
tially a  power  of  representation  ;  they  are  essences  with  inner  cir- 


310 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


cumstances,  while,  according  to  Herbart,  representation,  just  as  lit« 
tie  as  every  otlier  circumstance,  belongs  to  tbe  essence  itself. 

5.  Psychology  is  connected  with  metaphysics.  The  Ego  is 
primarily  a  metaphysical  problem,  and  comes  in  this  respect  under 
the  category  of  the  thing  with  its  characteristics.  It  is  a  real  with 
many  properties  changing  circumstances,  powers,  faculties,  activi- 
ties, &c.,  and  thus  is  not  without  contradictions.  But  then  the  Ego 
is  a  psychological  principle,  and  here  those  contradictions  may  be 
considered  which  lie  in  the  ideality  of  subject  and  object.  The 
subject  posits  itself  and  is  therefore  itself  object.  But  this  posited 
object  is  nothing  other  than  the  positing  subject.  Thus  the 
Ego  is,  as  Fichte  says,  subject-object,  and,  as  such,  full  of  the 
hardest  contradictions,  for  subject  and  object  will  never  be  affirmed 
as  one  and  the  same  without  contradiction.  But  now  if  the  Ego 
is  given  it  cannot  be  thrown  away,  but  must  be  purified  from  its 
contradictions.  This  occurs  whenever  the  Ego  is  conceived  as 
that  which  represents,  and  the  different  sensations,  thoughts,  &c. 
are  embraced  under  the  common  conception  of  changing  appear- 
ance. The  solution  of  this  problem  is  similar  to  that  of  inher- 
ence. As  in  the  latter  problem  the  thing  was  apprehended  as  a 
complex  of  as  many  reals  as  it  has  characteristics,  just  so  here  the 
Ego ;  but  with  the  Ego  inner  circumstances  and  representations 
correspond  to  the  characteristics.  Thus  that  which  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  name  Ego  is  nothing  other  than  the  soul.  The  soul  as 
a  monad,  as  absolutely  being,  is  therefore  simple,  eternal,  indis- 
soluble, from  which  we  may  conclude  its  eternal  existence.  From 
this  standpoint  Herbart  combats  the  ordinary  course  of  psychology 
which  ascribes  certain  powers  and  faculties  to  the  soul.  That 
which  stands  out  in  the  soul  is  nothing  other  than  self-preserva- 
tion, which  can  only  be  manifold  and  changing  in  opposition  to 
other  reals.  The  causes  of  changing  circumstances  are  therefore 
these  other  reals,  which  come  variously  in  conflict  with  the  soul- 
monad,  and  thus  produce  that  apparently  infinite  manifoldness  of 
sensations,  representations,  and  afiections.  This  theory  of  self, 
preservation  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  Herbart's  psychology.  That 
which  psychology  ordinarily  calls  feeling,  thinking,  representing, 


HERBART. 


311 


&c.,  are  only  specific  differences  in  the  self-preservation  of  the 
soul ;  they  indicate  no  proper  condition  of  the  inner  real  essence 
itself,  hut  only  relations  between  the  reals,  relations,  which,  coming 
up  together  at  the  same  time  from  different  sides,  are  partly  sup- 
pressed, partly  forwarded,  and  partly  modified  Consciousness  is 
the  sum  of  those  relations  in  which  the  soul  stands  to  other  essences. 
But  the  relations  to  the  objects,  and  hence  to  the  represen- 
tations corresponding  to  these,  are  not  all  equally  strong ;  one 
presses,  restricts,  and  obscures  another,  a  relation  of  equilibrium 
which  can  be  calculated  according  to  the  doctrine  of  statics.  But 
the  suppressed  representations  do  not  wholly  disappear,  but  wait- 
ing on  the  threshold  of  consciousness  for  the  favorable  moment 
when  they  shall  be  permitted  again  to  arise,  they  join  themselves 
with  kindred  representations,  and  press  forward  with  united  ener- 
gies. This  movement  of  the  representations  (sketched  in  a  master- 
ly manner  by  Herbart)  may  be  calculated  according  to  the  rules 
of  mathematics,  and  this  is  Herbart's  well  known  application  of 
mathematics  to  the  empirical  theory  of  the  soul.  The  represen- 
tations which  were  pressed  back,  which  wait  on  the  threshold  of  con- 
sciousness and  only  work  in  the  darkness,  and  of  which  we  are  on- 
ly half  conscious,  are  feelings.  They  express  themselves  as  desires, 
according  as  their  struggle  forward  is  more  or  less  successful. 
Desire  becomes  will  when  united  with  the  hope  of  success.  The 
will  is  no  separate  faculty  of  the  mind,  but  consists  only  in  the 
relation  of  the  dominant  representations  to  the  others.  The 
power  of  deciding  and  the  character  of  a  man,  prominently  depend 
upon  the  constant  presence  in  the  consciousness  of  a  certain  num- 
ber of  representations,  while  other  representations  are  weakened, 
or  denied  an  entrance  over  the  threshold  of  consciousness. 

6.  The  Importance  of  Herbart's  Philosophy. — Herbart's 
philosophy  is  important  mainly  for  its  metaphysics  and  psychology. 
In  the  other  spheres  and  activities  of  the  human  mind,  e.  g.  rights, 
morality,  the  state,  art,  religion,  his  philosophy  is  mostly  barren  of 
results,  and  though  there  are  not  wanting  here  striking  observa- 
tions, yet  these  have  no  connection  with  the  speculative  principles 
of  the  system.    Herbart  fundamentally  isolates  the  different  phil- 


312  A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 

osopliical  sciences,  distinguishing  especially  and  in  the  strictest 
manner  between  theoretical  and  practical  philosophy.  He  charges 
the  effort  after  unity  in  philosophy,  with  occasioning  the  greatest 
errors ;  for  logical,  metaphysical,  and  aesthetic  forms  are  entirely 
diverse.  Ethics  and  aesthetics  have  to  do  with  objects  in  which  an 
immediate  evidence  appears,  but  this  is  foreign  to  the  whole  nature 
of  metaphysics,  which  can  only  gain  its  knowledge  as  errors  have 
been  removed.  Esthetic  judgments  on  which  practical  philoso- 
phy rests,  are  independent  of  the  reality  of  any  object,  and  appear 
with  immediate  certainty  in  the  midst  of  the  strongest  metaphysi- 
cal doubts.  Moral  elements,  says  Herbart,  are  pleasing  and  dis- 
pleasing relations  of  the  will.  He  thus  grounds  the  whole 
practical  philosophy  upon  aesthetic  judgments.  The  aesthetic 
judgment  is  an  involuntary  and  immediate  judgment,  which 
attaches  to  certain  objects,  without  proof,  the  predicates  of  goodness 
and  badness. — Here  is  seen  the  greatest  difference  between  Her- 
bart and  Kant. 

We  may  characterize,  on  the  whole,  the  philosophy  of  Her- 
bart as  a  carrying  out  of  the  monadology  of  Leibnitz,  full  of  en- 
during acuteness,  but  without  any  inner  fruitfulness  or  capacity 
of  development. 


SECTION  XLIII. 

SCHELLING. 

Schelling  sprang  from  Fichte.  We  may  pass  on  to  an  expo- 
sition of  his  philosophy  without  any  farther  introduction,  since 
that  which  it  contains  from  Fichte  forms  a  part  of  its  historical 
development,  and  will  therefore  be  treated  of  as  this  is  un- 
folded. 

Friedrich  Wilhelm  Joseph  Schelling  was  born  at  Leonberg, 
in  W  rtemberg,  January  27th,  1775.  With  a  very  precocious 
development,  he  entered  the  theological  seminary  at  Tubingen  in 


SCHELLING.  313 

his  fifteenth  year,  and  devoted  himself  partly  to  philology  and 
mythology,  but  especially  to  Kant's  philosophy.     During  his 
course  as  a  student,  he  was  in  personal  connection  with  Holder- 
lin  and  Hegel.     Schelling  came  before  the  world  as  an  author 
very  early.    In  1792  appeared  his  graduating  treatise  on  the 
third  chapter  of  Genesis,  in  which  he  gave  an  interesting  philoso- 
phical signification  to  the  Mosaic  account  of  the  fall.    In  the  fol- 
lowing year,  1793,  he  published  in  Paulus'  Memorabilia  an  essay 
of  a  kindred  nature  ^'  On  the  Myths  and  Philosophemes  of  the 
Ancient  Worlds    To  the  last  year  of  his  abode  at  Tilbingen 
belong  the  two  philosophical  writings  :  "  Ori  the  Possibility  of  a 
Form  for  Philosophy,''''  and  "  On  the  Ego  as  a  Principle  of 
Philosophy,  or  on  the  Unconditioned  in  Human  Knowledge.''^ 
After  completing  his  university  studies,  Schelling  went  to  Leipsic 
as  tutor  to  the  Baron  von  Kiedesel,  but  soon  afterwards  repaired 
to  Jena,  where  he  became  the  pupil  and  co-laborer  of  Fichte. 
After  Fichte's  departure  from  Jena,  he  became  himself,  1798, 
teacher  of  philosophy  there,  and  now  began,  removing  himself 
from  Fichte's  standpoint,  to  develope  more  and  more  his  own  pe- 
culiar views.    He  published  in  Jena  the  Journal  of  Specidative 
Physics,  and  also  in  company  with  Hegel,  the  Critical  Journal. 
In  the  year  1803  he  went  to  Wvirzburg  as  professor  ordinarius 
of  philosophy.    In  1807  he  repaired  to  Munich  as  member  ordi- 
narius of  the  newly  established  academy  of  sciences  there.  The 
year  after  he  became  general  secretary  of  the  Academy  of  the 
plastic  arts,  and  subsequently,  when  the  university  professorship 
was  established  at  Munich,  he  became  its  incumbent.    After  the 
death  of  Jacobi,  he  was  chosen  president  of  the  Munich  Academy. 
In  1841  he  removed  to  Berlin,  where  he  has  sometimes  held  lec- 
tures.   For  the  last  ten  years  Schelling  has  Avritten  nothing  of 
importance,  although  he  has  repeatedly  promised  an  exposition  of 
his  present  system.    By  far  the  greater  portion  of  his  writings 
belongs  to  his  early  life.     Schelling's  philosophy  is  no  completed 
system  of  which  his  separate  works  are  the  constituent  elements ; 
but,  like  Plato's,  it  has  a  historical  development,  a  course  of 
formative  steps  which  the  philosopher  has  passed  through  in  his 
14 


314 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


own  life.  Instead  of  systematically  elaborating  tlie  separate 
sciences  from  the  standpoint  of  his  principle,  Schelling  has  gone 
back  repeatedly  to  the  beginning  again,  seeking  ever  for  new 
foundations  and  new  standpoints,  connecting  these  for  the  most  part 
(like  Plato)  with  some  antecedent  philosophemes,  (Fichte,  Spi- 
noza, New  Platonism,  Leibnitz,  Jacob  Boehme,  Gnosticism,)  which 
in  their  order  he  attempted  to  interweave  with  his  system.  We 
must  modify  accordingly  our  exposition  of  Schelling's  Philosophy, 
and  take  up  its  different  periods,  separated  according  to  the  dif- 
ferent groups  of  his  writings.* 

I.  First  Period.    Schelling's  Procession  from  Fichte. 

Schelling's  starting  point  was  Fichte,  whom  he  decidedly  fol- 
lowed in  his  earliest  writings.  In  his  essay,  "  On  the  Possibility 
of  a  Form  of  Philosophy,''^  he  shows  the  necessity  of  that  supreme 
principle  which  Fichte  had  first  propounded.  In  his  essay,  "  On 
the  ^^o,"  Schelling  shows  that  the  ultimate  ground  of  our  knowl- 
edge can  only  lie  in  the  Ego,  and  hence  that  every  true  philosophy 
must  be  idealism.  If  our  knowledge  shall  possess  reality,  there 
must  be  one  point  in  which  ideality  and  reality,  thought  and  be- 
ing, can  identically  coincide ;  and  if  outside  of  our  knowledge, 
there  were  something  higher  which  conditioned  it,  if  itself  were 
not  the  highest,  then  it  could  not  be  absolute.  Fichte  regarded 
this  essay  as  a  commentary  on  his  Theory  of  Science  ;  yet  it  con- 
tains already  indications  of  Schelling's  subsequent  standpoint,  in 
its  expressly  affirming  the  unity  of  all  knowledge,  the  necessity 
that  in  the  end  all  the  different  sciences  shall  become  merged  into 
one.  In  the  Letters  on  Dogmatism  and  Criticism,^''  1795, 
Schelling  combatted  the  notions  of  those  Kantians  who  had  left 
the  critical  and  idealistic  standpoint  of  their  master,  and  fallen 
back  again  into  the  old  dogmatism.  It  was  also  on  the  stand- 
point of  Fichte  that  Schelling  published  in  Niethammer's  and 
Fichte's  Journal,  1797-98,  a  series  of  articles,  in  which  he  gave 
a  survey  of  the  recent  philosophical  literature.    Here  he  begins 

*  Schelling  died  August  20th,  1854,  at  Ragaz,  Switzerland,  whither  he 
had  gone  for  the  benefit  of  his  health,  which  had  long  been  declining. — 
Translator. 


SCHELLING. 


315 


to  turn  his  attention  towards  a  philosophical  deduction  of  nature, 
though  he  still  remains  on  the  standpoint  of  Fichte  when  he  de- 
duces nature  wholly  from  the  essence  of  the  Ego.  In  the  essay 
which  was  composed  soon  after,  and  entitled  Ideas  for  a  philos- 
ophy of  Nature,^''  1797,  and  the  one  "  On  the  World-soul, 1798, 
he  gradually  unfolded  more  clearly  his  views.  The  chief  points 
which  are  brought  out  in  the  two  last  named  essays  are  the  fol- 
lowing :  The  first  origin  of  the  conception  of  matter  springs 
from  nature  and  the  intuition  of  the  human  mind.  The  mind  is 
the  union  of  an  unlimited  and  a  limiting  energy.  If  there  were 
no  limit  to  the  mind,  consciousness  would  he  just  as  impossible  as 
if  the  mind  were  totally  and  absolutely  limited.  Feeling,  percep- 
tion and  knowledge  are  only  conceivable,  as  the  energy  which 
strives  for  the  unlimited  becomes  limited  through  its  opposite,  and 
as  this  latter  becomes  itself  freed  from  its  limitations.  The  ac- 
tual mind  or  heart  consists  only  in  the  antagonism  of  these  two 
energies,  and  hence  only  in  their  ever  approximate  or  relative 
unity.  Just  so  is  it  in  nature.  Matter  as  such  is  not  the  first, 
for  the  forces  of  which  it  is  the  unity  are  before  it.  Matter  is 
only  to  be  apprehended  as  the  ever  becoming  product  of  attrac- 
tion and  repulsion  ;  it  is  not,  therefore,  a  mere  inert  grossness,  as 
we  are  apt  to  represent  it,  but  these  forces  are  its  original.  But 
force  in  the  material  is  like  something  immaterial.  Force  in  nature 
is  that  which  we  may  compare  to  mind.  Since  now  the  mind  or 
heart  exhibits  precisely  the  same  conflict,  as  matter,  of  opposite 
forces,  we  must  unite  the  two  in  a  higher  identity.  But  the  organ 
of  the  mind  for  apprehending  nature  is  the  intuition  which  takes, 
as  object  of  the  external  sense,  the  space  which  has  been  filled  and 
limited  by  the  attracting  and  repelling  forces.  Thus  Schelliug 
was  led  to  the  conclusion  that  the  same  absolute  appears  in  nature 
as  in  mind,  and  that  the  harmony  of  these  is  somethiug  more  than 
a  thought  in  reference  to  them.  "  Or  if  you  affirm  that  we  only 
carry  over  such  an  idea  to  nature,  then  have  you  utterly  failed  to 
apprehend  the  only  nature  which  there  can  be  to  us.  For  onr 
view  of  nature  is  not  that  it  accidentally  meets  the  laws  of  our 
mind — (perhaps  through  the  mediation  of  a  third) — but  that  it 


316 


A  HISTORY  OP  PHILOSOPHY. 


necessarily  and  originally  not  only  expresses,  but  itself  realizes, 
the  laws  of  our  mind,  and  that  it  is  nature,  and  is  called  such 
only  in  so  far  as  it  does  this."  "  Nature  should  be  the  visible 
mind,  and  mind  invisible  nature.  Here,  therefore,  in  the  absolute 
ideality  of  the  mind  within  us,  and  nature  wiihout  us,  must  we 
eolve  the  problem  how  it  is  possible  for  a  nature  outside  of  us  to 
be."  This  thought,  that  nature  or  matter  is  just  as  much  the  ac- 
tual unity  of  an  attracting  and  a  repelling  force,  as  the  mind  or 
heart  is  the  unity  of  an  unlimited  and  a  limiting  tendency,  and 
that  the  repelling  force  in  matter  corresponds  to  the  positive  or 
unlimited  activity  of  the  mind,  while  the  attracting  force  corres- 
ponds to  the  mind's  negative  or  limiting  activity — this  identical 
deduction  of  matter  from  the  essence  of  the  Ego,  is  very  promi- 
nent in  all  that  Schelling  wrote  upon  natural  philosophy  during 
this  period.  Nature  thus  appears  as  a  copy  (Doppelhild)  of  the 
mind,  which  the  mind  itself  produces,  in  order  to  return,  by  its 
means,  to  pure  self-intuition,  to  self-consciousness.  Hence  we 
have  the  successive  stages  of  nature,  in  which  all  the  stations  of 
the  mind  in  its  way  to  self- consciousness  are  externally  established. 
It  is  especially  in  the  organic  world  that  the  mind  can  behold  its 
own  self-production.  Hence,  in  every  thing  organic,  there  is 
something  symbolical,  every  plant  bears  some  feature  of  the  soul. 
The  chief  characteristics  of  an  organic  formation, — the  self-form- 
ing process  from  within  outwards,  the  conformity  to  some  end,  the 
change  of  interpenetration  of  form  and  matter — are  equally  chief 
features  of  the  mind.  Since  now  there  exists  in  our  mind  an  end- 
less striving  to  organize  itself,  so  there  must  also  be  manifested  in 
the  external  world  a  universal  tendency  to  organization.  The 
whole  universe  may  thus  be  called  a  kind  of  organization  which 
has  formed  itself  from  a  centre,  rising  ever  from  a  lower  to  a 
higher  stage.  From  such  a  point  of  view,  the  natural  philosopher 
will  make  it  his  chief  effort  to  bring  to  a  unity  in  his  contempla- 
tions that  life  of  nature,  which  by  many  researches  into  physical 
science  had  been  separated  into  numberless  different  powers.  "It 
is  a  needless  trouble  which  many  have  given  themselves,  to  show 
how  very  different  is  the  working  of  fire  and  electricity,  for  ever^; 


SCHELLING. 


317 


one  tnows  this  who  has  ever  seen  or  heard  of  the  two.  But  oui 
mind  strives  after  unity  in  the  system  of  its  knowledge;  it  will 
not  endure  that  there  should  be  pressed  upon  it  a  separate  princi- 
ple for  every  single  phenomenon,  and  it  will  only  believe  that  it 
sees  nature  where  it  can  discover  the  greatest  simplicity  of  laws 
in  the  greatest  multiplicity  of  phenomena,  and  the  highest  frugality 
of  means  in  the  highest  prodigality  of  effects.  Therefore,  every 
thought,  even  that  which  is  now  rough  and  crude,  merits  attention 
so  soon  as  it  tends  towards  the  simplifying  of  principles,  and  if  it 
serves  no  other  end,  it  at  least  strengthens  the  impulse  to  inves- 
tigate and  trace  out  the  hidden  process  of  nature."  The  special 
tendency  of  the  scientific  investigation  of  nature  which  prevailed 
at  that  time,  was  to  make  a  duality  of  forces  the  predominant  ele- 
ment in  the  life  of  nature.  In  mechanics,  the  Kantian  theory  of 
the  opposition  of  attraction  and  repulsion  was  adopted ;  in  chem- 
istry, by  apprehending  electricity  as  positive  and  negative,  its 
phenomenon  was  brought  near  that  of  magnetism  ;  in  physiology 
there  was  the  opposition  of  irritability  and  sensibility,  &c.  In 
opposition  to  these  dualities,  Schelling  now  insisted  upon  the  unity 
of  every  thing  opposite,  the  unity  of  all  dualities,  and  this  not 
simply  as  an  abstract  unity,  but  as  a  concrete  identity,  as  the  har- 
monious coworking  of  the  heterogeneous.  The  world  is  the  actual 
unity  of  a  positive  and  a  negative  principle,  "  and  these  two  con- 
flicting forces  taken  together,  or  represented  in  their  conflict,  lead 
to  the  idea  of  an  organizing  principle  which  makes  of  the  world 
a  system,  in  other  words,  to  the  idea  of  a  world-soul." 

In  his  above-cited  essay  on  "  ilie  tvorld-soulj''  Schelling  took 
the  great  step  forward  of  apprehending  nature  as  entirely  auto- 
nomic. In  the  world-soul  nature  has  a  peculiar  principle  which 
dwells  within  it,  and  works  according  to  conception.  In  this  way 
the  objective  world  was  recognized  as  the  independent  life  of  na- 
ture in  a  manner  which  the  logical  idealism  of  Fichte  would  not 
permit.  Schelling  proceeeded  still  farther  in  this  direction,  and 
distinguished  definitely,  as  the  two  sides  of  philosophy,  the  philos- 
ophy of  nature  and  a  transcendental  philosophy.  By  placing  a 
philosophy  of  nature  by  the  side  of  idealism,  Schelling  passed  de- 


318 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


cidedly  beyond  the  standpoint  of  science,  and  we  thus  enter  a 
second  stadium  of  his  philosophizing,  though  his  method  still  re- 
mained that  of  Fichte,  and  he  continued  to  believe  that  he  was 
speculating  in  the  spirit  of  the  Theory  of  Science. 

II.  Second  Period.  Standpoint  of  the  distinguishing  be- 
tween THE  Philosophy  of  Nature  and  of  Mind. 

This  standpoint  of  Schelling  is  chiefly  carried  out  in  the  fol- 
lowing works  : — "  First  Draft  of  a  System  of  Natural  Philoso- 
phy 1799;  an  introduction  to  this,  1799;  articles  in  the 
Journal  of  Speculative  Physics,''''  1800,  1801;  System  of 
Transcendental  Idealism,^  1800.  Schelling  thus  distinguishes 
the  two  sides  of  philosophy.  All  knowledge  rests  upon  the  har- 
mony  of  a  subject  with  an  object.  That  which  is  simply  objective 
is  natural,  and  that  which  is  simply  subjective  is  the  Ego  or  intel- 
ligence. There  are  two  possible  ways  of  uniting  these  two  sides : 
we  may  either  make  nature  first,  and  inquire  how  it  is  that  intel- 
ligence is  associated  with  it  (natural  philosophy) ;  or  we  may 
make  the  subject  first,  and  inquire  how  do  objects  proceed  from  the 
subject  (transcendental  philosophy).  The  end  of  all  philosophy 
must  be  to  make  either  an  intelligence  out  of  nature,  or  a  nature 
out  of  intelligence.  As  the  transcendental  philosophy  has  to  sub- 
ject the  real  to  the  ideal,  so  must  natural  philosophy  attempt  to 
explain  the  ideal  from  the  real.  Both,  however,  are  only  the  two 
poles  of  one  and  the  same  knowledge  which  reciprocally  attract 
each  other ;  hence,  if  we  start  from  either  pole,  we  are  necessa- 
rily drawn  towards  the  other. 

1.  Natural  Philosophy. — To  philosophize  concerning  nature 
is,  in  a  certain  sense,  to  create  nature — to  raise  it  from  the  dead 
mechanism  in  which  it  had  seemed  confined,  to  inspire  it  with  free- 
dom, and  transpose  it  into  a  properly  free  development.  And  what, 
then,  is  matter,  other  than  mind  which  has  become  extinct?  Ac- 
cording to  this  view,  since  nature  is  only  the  visible  organism  of 
our  understanding,  it  can  produce  nothing  but  what  is  conforma- 
ble to  a  rule  and  an  end.  But  you  radically  destroy  every  idea  of 
nature  just  so  soon  as  you  allow  its  design  to  have  come  to  it 
from  without,  by  passing  over  from  the  understanding  of  any 


SCHELLING. 


319 


1)eiDg.  The  complete  exhibition  of  the  intellectual  world  in  the 
laws  and  forms  of  the  phenomenal  world,  and,  on  the  other  hand 
the  complete  conception  of  these  laws  and  forms  from  the  intel- 
lectual world,  and  therefore  the  exhibition  of  the  ideality  of  na- 
ture with  the  ideal  world,  is  the  work  of  natural  philosophy. 
Immediate  experience  is  indeed  its  starting  point ;  we  know 
originally  nothing  except  through  experience ;  but  just  as  soon 
as  I  gain  an  insight  into  the  inner  necessity  of  a  principle  of  ex- 
perience, it  becomes  a  principle  apriori.  Natural  philosophy  is 
empiricism  extended  until  it  becomes  absolute. 

Schelling  expresses  himself  as  follows,  concerning  the  jhief 
principles  of  a  philosophy  of  nature.  Nature  is  a  suspension 
(Schivehen)  between  productivity  and  product,  which  Is  always 
passing  over  into  definite  forms  and  products,  just  as  it  is  always 
productively  passing  beyond  these.  This  suspension  indicates  a 
duality  of  principles,  through  which  nature  is  held  in  a  constant 
activity,  and  hindered  from  exhausting  itself  in  its  products.  A 
universal  duality  is  thus  the  principle  of  every  explanation  of 
nature ;  it  is  the  first  principle  of  a  philosophic  theory  of  nature, 
to  end  in  all  nature  with  polarity  and  dualism.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  final  cause  of  all  our  contemplation  of  nature  is  to  know 
that  absolute  unity  which  comprehends  the  whole,  and  which  suf- 
fers only  one  side  of  itself  to  be  known  in  nature.  Nature  is,  as 
it  were,  the  instrument  of  this  absolute  unity,  through  which  it 
eternally  executes  and  actualizes  that  which  is  prefigured  in  the 
absolute  understanding.  The  whole  absolute  is  therefore  cogni- 
zable in  nature,  though  phenomenal  nature  only  exhibits  in  a  suc- 
cession, and  produces  in  an  endless  development,  that  which  the 
true  or  real  nature  eternally  possesses.  Schelling  treats  of  natu- 
ral philosophy  in  three  sections  :  (1)  the  proof  that  nature,  in  its 
original  products,  is  organic  ;  (2)  the  conditions  of  an  inorganic 
nature ;  (3)  the  reciprocal  determination  of  organic  and  inorganic 
nature. 

(1.)  Organic  nature  Schelling  thus  deduces:  Nature  abso- 
lutely apprehended  is  nothing  other  than  infinite  activity,  infinite 
productivity.    If  this  were  unhindered  in  expressing  itself,  it 


320 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


would  at  once,  with  infinite  celerity,  produce  an  absolute  product^ 
wliicli  would  allow  no  explanation  for  empirical  nature.  If  this 
latter  may  be  explained — if  there  may  be  finite  products,  we  must 
consider  the  productive  activity  of  nature  as  restrained  by  an 
opposite,  a  retarding  activity,  which  lies  in  nature  itself.  Thus 
arises  a  series  of  finite  products.  But  since  the  absolute  produc- 
tivity of  nature  tends  towards  an  absolute  product,  these  indi- 
vidual products  are  only  apparent  ones,  beyond  each  one  of  which 
nature  herself  advances,  in  order  to  satisfy  the  absoluteness  of 
her  inner  productivity  through  an  infinite  series  of  individual 
products.  In  this  eternal  producing  of  finite  products,  nature 
shows  itself  as  a  living  antagonism  of  two  opposite  forces,  a  pro- 
ductive and  a  retarding  tendency.  And,  indeed,  the  working  of 
this  latter  is  infinitely  manifold ;  the  original  productive  impulse 
of  nature  has  not  only  to  combat  a  simple  restraint,  but  it  must 
struggle  with  an  infinity  of  reactions,  which  may  be  called  original 
qualities.  Hence  every  organic  being  is  the  permanent  expression 
for  a  conflict  of  reciprocally  destroying  and  limiting  actions  of 
nature.  And  from  this,  viz.,  from  the  original  limitation  and  in- 
finite restraint  of  the  formative  impulse  of  nature,  we  see  the 
reason  why  every  organization,  instead  of  attaining  to  an  absolute 
product,  only  reproduces  itself  ad  infinitum.  Upon  this  rests 
the  special  significance  for  the  organic  world,  of  the  distinction  of 
sex.  The  distinction  of  sex  fixes  the  organic  products  of  nature, 
it  restrains  them  within  their  own  processes  of  development,  and 
sufi"ers  them  only  to  produce  the  same  again.  But  in  this  produc- 
tion nature  has  no  regard  for  the  individual,  but  only  for  the 
species.  The  individual  is  contrary  to  nature;  nature  desires 
the  absolute,  and  its  constant  effort  is  to  represent  this.  Indi- 
vidual products,  therefore,  in  which  the  activity  of  nature  is 
brought  to  a  stand,  can  only  be  regarded  as  abortive  attempts  to 
represent  the  absolute.  Hence  the  individual  must  be  the  means, 
and  the  species  the  end  of  nature.  Just  so  soon  as  the  species  is 
secured,  nature  abandons  the  individuals  and  labors  for  their  de- 
struction. Schelling  divides  the  dynamic  scale  of  organic  nature 
according  to  the  three  grand  functions  of  the  organic  world: 


8CHELLING. 


321 


(a)  Formative  impulse  (reproductive  energy) ;  (h)  Irritability ; 
(c)  Sensibility.  Highest  in  rank  are  those  organisms  in  which 
sensibility  has  the  preponderance  over  irritability ;  a  lower  rank 
is  held  by  those  where  irritability  preponderates,  and  lower  still 
are  those  where  reproduction  first  comes  out  in  its  entire  perfec- 
tion, while  sensibility  and  irritability  are  almost  extinct.  Yet 
these  three  powers  are  interwoven  together  in  all  nature,  and 
hence  there  is  but  one  organization,  descending  through  all  nature 
from  man  to  the  plant. 

(2.)  Inorganic  nature  offers  the  antithesis  to  organic.  The 
existence  and  essence  of  inorganic  nature  are  conditioned  through 
the  existence  and  essence  of  organic  nature.  While  the  powers 
of  organic  nature  are  productive,  those  of  inorganic  nature  are  not 
productive.  While  organic  nature  aims  only  to  establish  the 
species,  inorganic  nature  regards  only  the  individual,  and  offers 
no  reproduction  of  the  species  through  the  individual.  It  pos- 
sesses a  great  multitude  of  materials,  but  can  only  use  these  ma- 
terials in  the  way  of  conjoining  or  separating.  In  a  word,  inor- 
ganic nature  is  simply  a  mass  held  together  by  some  external 
cause  as  gravity.  Yet  it,  like  organic  nature,  has  its  gradations. 
The  power  of  reproduction  in  the  latter  has  its  counterpart  in  the 
chemical  process  in  the  former ;  that  which  in  the  one  case  is 
irritability,  in  the  other  is  electricity ;  and  sensibility,  which  is 
the  highest  stage  of  organic  life,  corresponds  to  the  universal 
magnetism,  the  highest  stage  of  the  inorganic. 

(3.)  The  reciprocal  determination  of  the  organic  and  inor- 
ganic ivorld,  is  made  clear  by  what  has  already  been  said.  The 
result  to  which  every  genuine  philosophy  of  nature  must  come,  is 
that  the  distinction  between  organic  and  inorganic  nature  is  only 
in  nature  as  object,  and  that  nature,  as  originally  productive, 
waves  over  both.  If  the  functions  of  an  organism  are  only  pos- 
sible on  the  condition  that  there  is  a  definite  external  world,  and 
an  organic  world,  then  must  the  external  world  and  the  organic 
world  have  a  common  origin.  This  can  only  be  explained  on  the 
ground  that  inorganic  nature  presupposes  in  order  to  its  existence 
a  higher  dynamical  order  of  things,  to  which  it  is  subject.  There 


322 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


must  be  a  third,  which  can  unite  again  organic  and  inorganio 
nature ;  which  can  be  a  medium,  holding  the  continuity  between 
the  two.  Both  must  be  identified  in  some  ultimate  cause,  through 
which,  as  through  one  common  soul  of  nature  (world-soul),  both  the 
organic  and  inorganic,  i.  e.  universal  nature,  is  inspired ;  in  Bome 
common  principle,  which,  fluctuating  between  inorganic  and'  or- 
ganic nature,  and  maintaining  the  continuity  of  the  two,  contains 
the  first  cause  of  all  changes  in  the  one,  and  the  ultimate  ground 
of  all  activity  in  the  other.  We  have  here  the  idea  of  a  univer- 
sal organism.  That  it  is  one  and  the  same  organization  which 
unites  in  one  the  organic  and  inorganic  world,  would  appear  from 
what  has  already  been  said  of  the  parallel  gradations  of  the  two 
worlds.  That  which  in  universal  nature  is  the  cause  of  magnet- 
ism,  is  in  organic  nature  the  cause  of  sensibility,  and  the  latter  is 
only  a  higher  potency  of  the  former.  Just  as  in  the  organic 
world  through  sensibility,  so  in  universal  nature  through  magnet- 
ism, there  arises  a  duality  from  the  ideality.  In  this  way  or- 
ganic nature  appears  only  as  a  higher  stage  of  the  inorganic ;  the 
very  same  dualism  which  is  seen  in  magnetic  polarity,  electrical 
phenomena,  and  chemical  differences,  displays  itself  also  in  the 
organic  world. 

2.  Transcendental  Philosophy. — Transcendental  philoso- 
phy is  the  philosophy  of  nature  become  subjective.  The  whole 
succession  of  objects  thus  far  described,  becomes  now  repeated  as 
a  su«cessive  development  of  the  beholding  subject.  It  is  the  pe- 
culiarity of  transcendental  idealism,  that  so  soon  as  it  is  once  ad- 
mitted, it  requires  that  the  origin  of  all  knowledge  shall  be  sought 
for  anew ;  that  the  truth  which  has  long  been  considered  as  estab- 
lished, should  be  subjected  to  a  new  examination,  and  that  this 
examination  should  proceed  under  at  least  an  entirely  new  form. 
All  parts  of  philosophy  must  be  exhibited  in  one  continuity,  and 
the  whole  of  philosophy  must  be  regarded  as  that  which  it  is,  viz., 
the  advancing  history  of  consciousness,  which  can  use  only  as 
monuments  or  documents  that  which  is  laid  down  in  experience. 
(Schelling's  transcendental  idealism  is,  in  this  respect,  the  fore- 
runner to  Hegel's  Phcenomenology ^  which  pursues  a  similar 


6CHELLING.  328 

course).  The  exhibition  of  this  connection  is  properly  a  succes- 
sion of  intuitions  through  which  the  Ego  raises  itself  to  conscious- 
ness in  the  highest  potency.  Neither  transcendental  philosophy 
nor  the  philosophy  of  nature,  can  alone  rej)resent  the  parallelism 
between  nature  and  intelligence;  but,  in  order  to  this,  both 
sciences  must  be  united,  the  former  being  considered  as  a  neces- 
sary counterpart  to  the  other.  The  division  of  transcendental 
philosophy  follows  from  its  problem,  to  seek  anew  the  origin  of 
all  knowledge,  and  to  subject  to  a  new  examination  every  pre- 
vious judgment  which  had  been  held  to  be  established  truth.  The 
pre-judgments  of  the  common  understanding  are  principally  two  : 
(1)  That  a  world  of  objects  exist  independent  of,  and  outside  of, 
ourselves,  and  are  represented  to  us  just  as  they  are.  To  explain 
this  pre-judgment,  is  the  problem  of  the  first  part  of  the  transcen- 
dental philosophy  {theoretical  philosophy).  (2)  That  we  can 
produce  an  effect  upon  the  objective  world  according  to  represen- 
tations which  arise  freely  within  us.  The  solution  of  this  prob- 
lem is  practical  philosophy.  But,  with  these  two  problems  we 
find  ourselves  entangled,  (3)  in  a  contradiction.  How  is  it  possi- 
ble that  our  thought  should  ever  rule  over  the  world  of  sense,  if 
the  representation  is  conditional  in  its  origin  by  the  objective? 
The  solution  of  this  problem,  which  is  the  highest  of  transcenden- 
tal philosophy,  is  the  answer  to  the  question :  how  can  the  repre- 
sentations be  conceived  as  directing  themselves  according  to  the 
objects,  and  at  the  same  time  the  objects  be  conceived  as  direct- 
ing themselves  according  to  the  representations  ?  This  is  only 
conceivable  on  the  ground  that  the  activity  through  which  the 
objective  world  is  produced,  is  originally  identical  with  that 
which  utters  itself  in  the  will.  To  show  this  identity  of  conscious 
and  unconscious  activity,  is  the  problem  of  the  third  part  of 
transcendental  philosophy,  or  the  science  of  ends  in  nature  and 
of  art.  The  three  parts  of  the  transcendental  philosophy  corre- 
spond thus  entirely  to  the  three  criticks  of  Kant. 

(1.)  The  theoretical  philosophy  starts  from  the  highest  prin- 
ciple of  knowledge,  the  self-consciousness,  and  from  this  point 
developes  the  history  of  self-consciousness,  according  to  its  most 


324 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHT. 


prominent  epochs  and  stations,  viz.,  sensation,  intuition,  produc- 
tive intuition  (which  produces  matter) — outer  and  inner  intuition 
(from  which  space  and  time,  and  all  Kant's  categories  may  be 
derived),  abstraction  (by  which  the  intelligence  distinguishes 
itself  from  its  products) — absolute  abstraction,  or  absolute  act 
of  will.    With  the  act  of  the  will  there  is  spread  before  us, 

(2).  The  Field  of  Practical  Philosophy. — In  practical  philos- 
ophy the  Ego  is  no  longer  beholding,  i.  e.  consciousless,  but 
is  consciously  producing,  i.  e.  realizing.  As  a  whole,  nature  de- 
velopes  itself  from  the  original  act  of  self-consciousness,  so  from 
the  second  act,  or  the  act  of  free  self-determination,  there  is  pro- 
duced a  second  nature,  to  find  the  origin  for  which  is  the  object 
of  practical  philosophy.  In  his  exposition  of  the  practical  phi- 
losophy, Schelling  follows  almost  wholly  the  theory  of  Fichte, 
but  closes  this  section  with  some  remarkable  expressions  respect- 
ing the  philosophy  of  history.  History,  as  a  whole,  is,  according 
to  him,  a  gradual  and  self-disclosing  revelation  of  the  absolute,  a 
progressing  demonstration  of  the  existence  of  a  God.  The  his- 
tory of  this  revelation  may  be  divided  into  three  periods.  The 
first  is  that  in  which  the  overruling  power  was  apprehended  only 
as  destiny,  i.  e.  as  a  blind  power,  cold  and  consciousless,  which 
brings  the  greatest  and  most  glorious  things  of  earth  to  ruin ;  it 
is  marked  by  the  decay  of  the  magnificence  and  wonders  of  the 
ancient  world,  and  the  fall  of  the  noblest  manhood  that  has  ever 
bloomed.  The  second  period  of  history  is  that  in  which  this  des- 
tiny manifests  itself  as  nature,  and  the  hidden  law  seems  changed 
into  a  manifest  law  of  nature,  which  compels  freedom  and  every 
choice  to  submit  to  and  serve  a  plan  of  nature.  This  period 
seems  to  begin  with  the  spread  of  the  great  Roman  republic. 
The  third  period  will  be  that  where  what  has  previously  been  re- 
garded as  destiny  and  nature,  will  develope  itself  as  Providence. 
When  this  period  shall  begin,  we  cannot  say ;  we  can  only  affirm 
that  if  it  be,  then  God  will  be  seen  also  to  be. 

(3.)  Philosophy  of  Art. — The  problem  of  transcendental 
philosophy  is  to  harmonize  the  subjective  and  the  objective.  In 
history,  with  which  practical  philosophy  closes,  the  identity  of 


SCHELLING. 


325 


the  two  is  not  exhibited,  but  only  approximated  in  an  infinite 
progress.  But  now  the  Ego  must  attain  a  position  where  it  can 
actually  look  upon  this  identity,  which  constitutes  its  inner  es- 
sence. If  now  all  conscious  activity  exhibits  design,  then  a  con- 
scious and  consciousless  activity  can  only  coincide  in  a  product, 
which,  though  it  exhibits  design,  was  yet  produced  without  de- 
sign. Such  a  product  is  nature  ;  we  have  here  the  principle  of 
all  teleology^  in  which  alone  the  solution  of  the  given  problem 
can  be  sought.  The  peculiarity  of  nature  is  this,  viz.,  that 
though  it  exhibits  itself  as  nothing  but  a  blind  mechanism,  it  yet 
displays  design,  and  represents  an  identity  of  the  conscious  sub- 
jective, and  the  consciousless  objective  activity ;  in  it  the  Ego 
beholds  its  own  most  peculiar  essence,  which  consists  alone  in  this 
identity.  But  in  nature  the  Ego  beholds  this  identity,  not  as 
something  objective,  which  has  a  being  only  outside  of  it,  but 
also  as  that  whose  principle  lies  within  the  Ego  itself.  This  be- 
holding is  the  art-intuition.  As  the  production  of  nature  is  con- 
sciousless, though  similar  to  that  which  is  conscious,  so  the  aes- 
thetic production  of  the  artist  is  a  conscious  production,  similar 
to  that  which  is  consciousless.  Esthetics  must  therefore  be 
joined  to  teleology.  That  contradiction  between  the  conscious 
and  the  consciousless,  which  moves  forward  untiringly  in  history, 
and  which  is  unconsciously  reconciled  in  nature,  finds  its  con- 
scious reconciliation  in  a  work  of  art.  In  a  work  of  art,  the  in- 
telligence attains  a  perfect  intuition  of  itself.  The  feeling  which 
accompanies  this  intuition,  is  the  feeling  of  an  endless  satisfac- 
tion ;  all  contradictions  being  resolved,  and  every  riddle  ex- 
plained. The  unknown,  which  unexpectedly  harmonizes  the  ob- 
jective and  the  conscious  activity,  is  nothing  other  than  that  ab- 
solute and  unchangeable  identity,  to  which  every  existence  must 
be  referred.  In  the  artist  it  lays  aside  the  veil,  which  elsewhere 
surrounds  it,  and  irresistibly  impels  him  to  complete  his  work. 
Thus  there  is  no  other  eternal  revelation  but  art,  and  this  is  also 
the  miracle  which  should  convince  us  of  the  reality  of  that  su- 
preme, which  is  never  itself  objective,  but  is  the  cause  of  all  ob- 
jective.   Hence  art  holds  a  higher  rank  than  philosophy,  for  only 


826 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


in  art  has  the  intellectual  intuition  objectivity.  There  is  noth- 
ing, therefore,  higher  to  the  philosopher  than  art,  because  this 
opens  before  him,  as  it  were,  the  holy  of  holies,  where  that  which 
is  separate  in  nature  and  history,  and  which  in  _ife  and  action,  as 
in  thought,  must  ever  diverge,  burns,  as  it  were,  in  one  flame,  in 
an  eternal  and  original  union.  From  this  we  see  also  both  the 
fact  and  the  reason  for  it,  that  philosophy,  as  philosophy,  can 
never  be  universally  valid.  Art  is  that  alone  to  which  is  given 
an  absolute  objectivity,  and  it  is  through  this  alone  that  nature, 
consciously  productive,  concludes  and  completes  itself  within  itself. 

The  "  Transcendental  Idealism "  is  the  last  work  which 
Schelling  wrote  after  the  method  of  Fichte.  In  its  principle  he 
goes  decidedly  beyond  the  standpoint  of  Fichte.  That  which 
was  with  Fichte  the  inconceivable  limit  of  the  Ego,  Schelling 
derives  as  a  necessary  duality,  from  the  simple  essence  of  the 
Ego.  While  Fichte  had  regarded  the  union  of  subject  and  ob- 
ject, only  as  an  infinite  progression  towards  that  which  ought  to 
be,  Schelling  looked  upon  it  as  actually  accomplished  in  a  work 
of  art.  With  Fichte  God  was  apprehended  only  as  the  object  of 
a  moral  faith,  but  with  Schelling  he  was  looked  upon  as  the  im- 
mediate object  of  the  aesthetic  intuition.  This  difference  between 
the  two  could  not  long  be  concealed  from  Schelling.  He  was 
obliged  to  see  that  he  no  longer  stood  upon  the  basis  of  subjec- 
tive idealism,  but  that  his  real  position  was  that  of  objective  ideal- 
ism. If  he  had  already  gone  beyond  Fichte  in  setting  the  phi- 
losophy of  nature  and  transcendental  philosophy  opposite  to  each 
other,  it  was  perfectly  consistent  for  him  now  to  go  one  step  far- 
ther, and,  placing  himself  on  the  point  of  indifierence  between 
the  two,  make  the  identity  of  the  ideal  and  the  real,  of  thought 
and  being,  as  his  principle.  This  principle  Spinoza  had  already 
possessed  before  him.  To  this  philosophy  of  identity  Schelling 
now  found  himself  peculiarly  attracted.  Instead  of  following 
Fichte's  method,  he  now  availed  himself  of  that  of  Spinoza,  the 
mathematical,  to  which  he  ascribed  the  greatest  evidence  of  proof. 

III.  Third  Period  :  Period  of  Spinozism,  or  the  Indif- 
ference OF  THE  Ideal  and  the  Real. 


SCHELLING. 


327 


The  principal  writings  of  this  period  are  : — "  Exposiiion  of  my 
System  of  Philosophy  "  (Journal  for  Speculative  Physics,  ii.  2) ; 
the  second  edition,  with  additions,  of  the  "  Ideas  for  a  Philosophy 
of  Nature y''  1803;  the  dialogue,  Bruno,  or  concerning  the  Di 
vine  and  the  Natural  Principle  of  Things,''^  1802;  ^''Lectures 
on  the  Method  of  Academical  Study, ''^  1803;  three  numbers  of  a 
"  New  Journal  for  Speculative  Physics,''"'  1802-3.  The  charac- 
teristic of  the  new  standpoint  of  Schelling,  to  which  we  now  arrive, 
is  perfectly  exhibited  in  the  definition  of  reason,  which  he  places 
at  the  head  of  the  first  of  the  above-named  writings ;  I  give  to 
reason  the  name  absolute,  or  the  reason  in  so  far  as  it  is  con- 
ceived as  the  total  indifference  of  the  subjective  and  the  objec- 
tive. To  think  of  reason  is  demanded  of  every  man  ;  to  think  of 
it  as  absolute,  and  thus  to  reach  the  standpoint  which  I  require, 
every  thing  must  be  abstracted  from  the  thinking  subject.  To 
him  who  makes  this  abstraction,  reason  immediately  ceases  to  be 
something  subjective,  as  most  men  represent  it ;  neither  can  it  be 
conceived  as  something  objective,  since  an  objective,  or  that 
which  is  thought,  is  only  possible  in  opposition  to  that  which 
thinks.  AYe  thus  rise  through  this  abstraction  to  the  reality  of 
things  {zum  ivahren  an-sich),  which  reality  is  precisely  in  the 
indifference  point  of  the  subjective  and  the  objective.  The  stand- 
point of  philosophy  is  the  standpoint  of  reason ;  its  knowledge  is 
a  knowledge  of  things  as  they  are  in  themselves,  i.  e.  as  they  are  in 
the  reason.  It  is  the  nature  of  philosophy  to  destroy  every  distinc- 
tion which  the  imagination  has  mingled  with  the  thinking,  and 
to  see  in  things  only  that  through  which  they  express  the  absolute 
reason,  not  regarding  in  them  that  which  is  simply  an  object  for 
that  reflection  which  expends  itself  on  the  laws  of  mechanism  and 
in  time.  Besides  reason  there  is  nothings  and  in  it  is  every 
thing.  Keason  is  the  absolute.  All  objections  to  this  principle 
can  only  arise  from  the  fact,  that  men  are  in  the  habit  of  looking 
at  things  not  as  they  are  in  reason,  but  as  they  appear.  Every 
thing  which  is,  is  in  essence  like  the  reason,  and  is  one  with  it» 
It  is  not  the  reason  which  posits  something  external  to  itself, 
but  only  the  false  use  of  reason,  which  is  connected  with  the 


328 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


incapacity  of  forgetting  the  subjective  in  itself.  The  reason  is 
absolutely  one  and  like  itself.  The  highest  law  for  the  being 
of  reason,  and  since  there  is  nothing  besides  reason,  the  high- 
est law  for  all  being,  is  the  law  of  identity.  Between  subject 
and  object  therefore — since  it  is  one  and  the  same  absolute 
identity  which  displays  itself  in  both — there  can  be  no  differ- 
ence except  a  quantitative  difference  (a  difference  of  more  or 
less),  so  that  nothing  is  either  simple  object  or  simple  subject,  but 
in  all  things  subject  and  object  are  united,  this  union  being  in 
different  proportions,  so  that  sometimes  the  subject  and  sometimes 
the  object  has  the  preponderance.  But  since  the  absolute  is  pure 
identity  of  subject  and  object,  there  can  be  no  quantitative  differ- 
ence except  outside  of  the  identity,  i.  e.  in  the  finite.  As  the 
fundamental  form  of  the  infinite  is  A=A,  so  the  scheme  of  the 
finite  is  A=B  (i.  e.  the  union  of  a  subjective  with  another  objec- 
tive in  a  different  proportion).  But,  in  reality,  nothing  is  finite, 
because  the  identity  is  the  only  reality.  So  far  as  there  is  differ- 
ence in  individual  things,  the  identity  exists  in  the  form  of  indif- 
ference. If  we  could  see  together  every  thing  which  is,  we  should 
find  in  all  the  pure  identity,  because  we  should  find  in  all  a  perfect 
quantitative  equilibrium  of  subjectivity  and  objectivity.  True, 
we  find,  in  looking  at  individual  objects,  that  sometimes  the  pre- 
ponderance is  on  one  side  and  sometimes  on  the  other,  but  in  the 
whole  this  is  compensated.  The  absolute  identity  is  the  absolute 
totality,  the  universe  itself.  There  is  in  reality  (an-sicli)  no  indi- 
vidual being  or  thing.  There  is  in  reality  nothing  beyond  the 
totality ;  and  if  any  thing  beyond  this  is  beheld,  this  can  only 
happen  by  virtue  of  an  arbitrary  separation  of  the  individual  from 
the  whole,  which  is  done  through  reflection,  and  is  the  source  of 
every  error.  The  absolute  identity  is  essentially  the  same  in 
every  part  of  the  universe.  Hence  the  universe  may  be  conceived 
under  the  figure  of  a  line,  in  the  centre  of  which  is  the  A=A, 

while  at  the  end  on  one  side  is  A=B,  i.  e.  a  transcendence  of  the 

subjective",  and  at  the  end  on  the  other  side  is  A=B,  i.  e.  a  trans- 
cendence of  the  objective,  though  this  must  be  conceived  so  that  a 


SCHELLING. 


329 


relative  identity  may  exist  even  in  these  extremes.  The  one  side 
is  the  real  or  nature,  the  other  side  is  the  ideal.  The  real  side 
develoj^es  itself  according  to  three  potences  (a  potence,  or  power, 
indicates  a  definite  quantitative  difference  of  subjectivity  and  ob- 
jectivity). (1)  The  first  potence  is  matter  and  weight — the 
greatest  preponderance  of  the  object.  (2)  The  second  potence  is 
light  (A^),  an  inner — as  weight  is  an  outer — intuition  of  nature. 
The  light  is  a  higher  rising  of  the  subjective.  It  is  the  absolute 
identity  itself.  (3)  The  third  potence  is  organism  (A^),  the 
common  product  of  light  and  weight.  Organism  is  just  as 
original  as  matter.  Inorganic  nature,  as  such,  does  not  exist :  it 
is  actually  organized,  and  is,  as  it  were,  the  universal  germ  out  of 
which  organization  proceeds.  The  organization  of  every  globe  is 
but  the  inner  evolution  of  the  globe  itself ;  the  earth  itself,  by  its 
own  evolving,  becomes  animal  and  plant.  The  organic  world  has 
not  formed  itself  out  of  the  inorganic,  but  has  been  at  least  poten- 
tially present  in  it  from  the  beginning.  That  matter  which  lies 
before  us,  apparently  inorganic,  is  the  residuum  of  organic  meta- 
morphoses, which  could  not  become  organic.  The  human  brain 
is  the  highest  bloom  of  the  whole  organic  metamorphosis 
of  the  earth.  From  the  above,  Schelling  adds,  it  must  be  per- 
ceived that  we  affirm  an  inner  identity  of  all  things,  and  a  poten- 
tial presence  of  every  thing  in  every  other,  and  therefore  even  the 
so-called  dead  matter  may  be  viewed  only  as  a  sleeping-world  of 
animals  and  plants,  which,  in  some  period,  the  absolute  identity 
may  animate  and  raise  to  life.  At  this  point  Schelling  stops  sud- 
denly, without  developing  further  the  three  potences  of  the  ideal 
series,  corresponding  to  those  of  the  real.  Elsewhere  he  com- 
pletes the  work  by  setting  up  the  following  three  potences  of  the 
ideal  series  :  (1)  Knowledge,  the  potence  of  reflection  ;  (2)  Action, 
the  potence  of  subsumption ;  (3)  the  Reason  as  the  unity  of  re- 
flection and  subsumptioa.  These  three  potences  represent  them- 
selves :  (1)  as  the  true,  the  imprinting  of  the  matter  in  the  form; 

(2)  as  the  good,  or  the  imprinting  of  the  form  in  the  matter ; 

(3)  as  the  beautiful,  or  the  work  of  art,  the  absolute  blending  to- 
gether of  form  and  matter. 


330 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHT. 


Schelling  sought  also  to  furnish  himself  with  a  new  method 
for  knowing  the  absolute  identity.  Neither  the  analytic  nor  the 
synthetical  method  seems  to  him  suitable  for  this,  since  both  are 
only  a  finite  knowledge.  Gradually,  also,  he  abandoned  the 
mathematical  method.  The  logical  forms  of  the  ordinary  method 
of  knowledge,  and  even  the  ordinary  metaphysical  categories,  were 
now  insufficient  for  him.  Schelling  now  places  the  intellectual 
intuition  as  the  starting  point  of  true  knowledge.  Intuition,  in 
general,  is  an  equal  positing  of  thought  and  being.  When  I  be- 
hold an  object,  the  being  of  the  object  and  my  thought  of  the 
object  is  for  me  absolutely  the  same.  But  in  the  ordinary  intui- 
tion, some  separate  sensible  being  is  posited  as  one  with  the 
thought.  But  in  the  intellectual  or  rational  intuition,  being  in 
general,  and  every  being  is  made  identical  with  the  thought,  and 
the  absolute  suhj ect-ohj ect  is  beheld.  The  intellectual  intuition 
is  absolute  knowledge,  and  as  such  it  can  only  be  conceived  as 
that  in  which  thought  and  being  are  not  opposed  to  each  other. 
It  is  the  beginning  and  the  first  step  towards  philosophy  to  behold, 
immediately  and  intellectually  within  thyself,  that  same  indifi'er- 
ence  of  the  ideal  and  the  real  which  thou  beholdest  projected  as 
it  were  from  thyself  in  space  and  time.  This  absolutely  absolute 
mode  of  knowledge  is  wholly  and  entirely  in  the  absolute  itself. 
That  it  can  never  become  taught  is  clear.  It  cannot,  moreover, 
be  seen  why  philosophy  is  bound  to  have  special  regard  to  the 
unattainable.  It  seems  much  more  fitting  to  make  so  complete  a 
separation  on  every  side  between  the  entrance  to  philosophy  and 
the  common  knowledge,  that  no  road  nor  track  shall  lead  from  the 
latter  to  the  former.  The  absolute  mode  of  knowledge,  like  the 
truth  which  it  contains,  has  no  true  opposition  outside  of  itself, 
and  as  it  cannot  be  demonstrated  by  any  intelligent  being,  so 
nothing  can  be  set  up  in  opposition  to  it  by  any. — Schelling  has 
attempted  to  bring  the  intellectual  intuition  into  a  method,  and 
has  named  this  method  construction.  The  possibility  and  the 
necessity  of  the  constructive  method  is  based  upon  the  fact  that 
the  absolute  is  in  all,  and  that  all  is  the  absolute.  Construction 
is  nothing  other  than  the  proving  that  the  whole  is  absolutely  ex- 


SCHELLING. 


331 


pressed  in  every  particular  relation  and  object.  To  construe  an 
object,  pbilosophically,  is  to  prove  that  in  this  object  the  whole 
inner  structure  of  the  absolute  repeats  itself. 

In  SchelliDg's  Lectures  on  the  3Iethod  of  Academical 
Study''"'  (delivered  in  1802,  and  published  in  1803),  he  sought  to 
treat  encyclopaediacally,  every  philosophical  discipline  from  the 
given  standpoint  of  identity  or  indifference.  They  furnish  a  con- 
nected and  popular  exposition  of  the  outlines  of  his  philosophy,  in 
the  form  of  a  critical  modelling  of  the  studies  of  the  university 
course.  The  most  noticeable  feature  in  them  is  Schelling's  attempt 
at  a  historical  construction  of  Christianity.  The  incarnation  of 
God  is  an  incarnation  from  eternity.  The  eternal  Son  of  God, 
born  from  the  essence  of  the  father  of  all  things,  is  the  finite  itself, 
as  it  is  in  the  eternal  intuition  of  God.  Christ  is  only  the  his- 
torical and  phenomenal  pinnacle  of  the  incarnation ;  as  an  indi- 
vidual, he  is  a  person  wholly  conceivable  from  the  circumstances 
of  the  age  in  which  he  appeared.  Since  God  is  eternally  outside 
of  all  time,  it  is  inconceivable  that  he  should  have  assumed  a 
human  nature  at  any  definite  moment  of  time.  The  temporal 
form  of  Christianity,  the  exoteric  Christianity  does  not  correspond 
to  its  idea,  and  has  its  perfection  yet  to  be  hoped  for.  A  chief 
hindrance  to  the  perfection  of  Christianity,  was,  and  is  the  so- 
called  Bible,  which,  moreover,  is  far  inferior  to  other  religious 
writings,  in  a  genuine  religious  content.  The  future  must  bring 
a  new  birth  of  the  esoteric  Christianity,  or  a  new  and  higher  form 
of  religion,  in  which  philosophy,  religion  and  poesy  shall  melt 
together  in  unity. — This  latter  remark  contains  already  an  intima- 
tion of  the  "  Philosophy  of  Bevelation,^^  a  work  subsequently 
written  by  Schelling,  and  which  exhibited  many  of  the  principles 
current  in  the  age  of  the  apostle  J ohn.  In  the  work  we  are  now 
considering,  there  are  also  many  other  points  which  correspond  to 
this  later  standpoint  of  Schelling.  Thus  he  places  at  the  summit 
of  history  a  kind  of  golden  age.  It  is  inconceivable,  he  says,  that 
man  as  he  now  appears,  should  have  raised  himself  through  him- 
self from  instinct  to  consciousness,  from  animality  to  rationality. 
Another  human  race,  must,  therefore,  have  preceded  the  present, 


382 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


which  the  old  saga  have  immortalized  under  the  form  of  gods  and 
heroes.  The  first  origin  of  religion  and  culture  is  only  conceiva- 
ble through  the  instruction  of  higher  natures.  I  hold  the  condi- 
tion of  culture  as  the  first  condition  of  the  human  race,  and  con- 
siderer  the  first  foundation  of  states,  sciences,  religion  and  arts  as 
cotemporary,  or  rather  as  one  thing :  so  that  all  these  were  not 
truly  separate,  but  in  the  completest  interpenetration,  as  it  will  be 
again  in  the  final  consummation.  Schelling  is  no  more  than  con- 
sistent when  he  accordingly  apprehends  the  symbols  of  mythology 
which  we  meet  with  at  the  beginning  of  history,  as  disclosures  of 
the  highest  wisdom.  There  is  here  also  a  step  towards  his  sub- 
sequent "  Philosophy  of  Mythologyy 

The  mystical  element  revealed  in  these  expressions  of  Schelling 
gained  continually  a  greater  prominence  with  him.  Its  growth^ 
was  partly  connected  with  his  fruitless  search  after  an  absolute 
method,  and  a  fitting  form  in  which  he  might  have  satisfactorily 
expressed  his  philosophic  intuitions.  All  noble  mysticism  rests 
on  the  incapacity  of  adequately  expressing  an  infinite  content  in 
the  form  of  a  conception.  So  Schelling,  after  he  had  been  rest- 
lessly tossed  about  in  every  method,  soon  gave  up  also  his  method 
of  construction,  and  abandoned  himself  wholly  to  the  unlimited 
current  of  his  fancy.  But  though  this  was  partly  the  cause  of 
his  mysticism,  it  is  also  true  that  his  philosophical  standpoint  was 
gradually  undergoing  a  change.  From  the  speculative  science  of 
nature,  he  was  gradually  passing  over  more  and  more  into  the 
philosophy  of  mind,  by  which  the  determination  of  the  absolute 
in  his  conception  became  changed.  While  he  had  previously  de- 
termined the  absolute  as  the  indifierence  of  the  ideal  and  the  real^ 
he  now  gives  a  preponderance  to  the  ideal  over  the  real,  and  makeb 
ideality  the  fundamental  determination  of  the  absolute.  The 
first  is  the  ideal ;  secondly,  the  ideal  determines  itself  in  itself  to 
the  real,  and  the  real  as  such  is  the  third.  The  earlier  harmony 
of  mind  and  matter  is  dissolved :  matter  appears  now  as  the  nega- 
tive of  mind.  Since  Schelling  in  this  way  distinguishes  the  uni- 
verse from  the  absolute  as  its  counterpart,  we  see  that  he  leaves 


SCHELLING. 


333 


decidedly  the  basis  of  Spinozism  on  which  he  had  previously 
stood,  and  places  himself  on  a  new  standpoint. 

lY.  Fourth  Pemod  :  the  Direction  of  Schelling's  Phi- 
losophy AS  Mystical  and  allied  to  New-Platonism. 

The  writings  of  this  period  are  : — "  Philosophy  and  JReligion,^^ 
1804.  "  Exposition  of  the  true  relation  of  the  Philosophy  of 
Nature  to  the  improved  Theory  of  Fichte,^^  1806 ;  "  Medical 
Annual  "  (published  in  company  with  Marcus)  1805-1808. — As 
has  already  been  said,  the  absolute  and  the  universe  were,  on  the 
standpoint  of  indilference,  identical.  Nature  and  history  were 
immediate  manifestations  of  the  absolute.  But  now  Schelling  lays 
stress  upon  the  difference  between  the  two,  and  the  independence  of 
the  world.  This  he  expresses  in  a  striking  way  in  the  first  of  the 
above  named  writings,  by  placing  the  origin  of  the  world  wholly 
after  the  manner  of  New-Platonism,  in  a  breaking  away  or  a  fall- 
ing off  from  the  absolute.  From  the  absolute  to  the  actual,  there 
is  no  abiding  transition  ;  the  origin  of  the  sensible  world  is  only 
conceivable  as  a  complete  breaking  off  per  saltum  from  the  abso- 
lute. The  absolute  is  the  only  real,  finite  things  are  not  real ; 
they  can,  therefore,  have  their  ground  in  no  reality  imparted  to 
them  from  the  absolute,  but  only  in  a  separation  and  complete 
falling  away  from  the  absolute.  The  reconciliation  of  this  fall, 
and  the  manifestation  of  God  made  complete,  is  the  final  cause  of 
history.  With  this  idea  there  are  also  connected  other  represen- 
tations borrowed  from  New-Platonism,  which  Schelling  briugs  out 
in  the  same  work.  He  speaks  in  it  of  the  descent  of  the  soul 
from  intellectuality,  to  the  world  of  sense,  and  like  the  Platonic 
myth  he  allows  this  fall  of  souls  to  be  a  punishment  for  their  self- 
hood (pride) ;  he  speaks  also  in  connection  with  this  of  a  regenera- 
tion, or  transmigration  of  souls,  by  which  they  either  -begin  a 
higher  life  on  a  better  sphere,  or  intoxicated  with  matter,  they  are 
driven  down  to  a  still  lower  abode,  according  as  they  have  in  the 
present  life  laid  aside  more  or  less  of  their  selfhood,  and  become 
purified  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  to  an  identity  with  the  infi- 
nite ;  but  we  are  especially  reminded  of  New-Platonism  by  the  high 
place  and  the  mystical  and  symbolical  significance,  which  Schelling 


334 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


gives  in  this  work  to  the  Greek  mysteries  (as  did  Bruno),  and  the 
view  that  if  religion  would  be  held  in  its  pure  ideality,  it  can  only 
exist  as  exoteric,  or  in  the  form  of  mysteries. — This  notion  of  a 
higher  blending  together  of  religion  and  philosophy  goes  through 
all  the  writings  of  this  period.  All  true  experience,  says  Schel- 
ling  in  the  "  Medical  Annual,''''  is  religious.  The  existence  of 
God  is  an  empirical  truth,  and  the  ground  of  all  experience. 
True,  religion  is  not  philosophy,  but  the  philosophy  which  does 
not  unite  in  sacred  harmony,  religion  with  science,  were  unworthy 
of  the  name.  True,  I  know  something  higher  than  science.  And 
if  science  has  only  these  two  ways  open  before  it  to  knowledge, 
viz.,  that  of  analysis  or  abstraction,  and  that  of  synthetic  deriva- 
tion, then  we  deny  all  science  of  the  absolute.  Speculation  is 
every  thing,  i.  e.  a  beholding,  a  contemplation  of  that  which  is  in 
God.  Science  itself  has  worth  only  so  far  as  it  is  speculative,  i.  e. 
only  so  far  as  it  is  a  contemplation  of  God  as  he  is.  But  the  time 
will  come  when  the  sciences  shall  more  and  more  cease,  and 
immediate  knowledge  take  their  place.  The  mortal  eye  closes 
only  in  the  highest  science,  where  it  is  no  longer  the  man  who  sees, 
but  the  eternal  beholding  which  has  now  become  seeing  in  him. 

With  this  theosophic  view  of  the  world,  Schelling  was  led  to 
pay  attention  to  the  earlier  mystics.  He  began  to  study  their 
writings.  He  answered  the  charge  of  mysticism  in  his  controversy 
with  Fichte  as  follows  : — Among  the  learned  of  the  last  century, 
there  was  a  tacit  agreement  never  to  go  beyond  a  certain  height, 
and,  therefore,  the  genuine  spirit  of  science  was  given  up  to  the 
unlearned.  These,  because  they  were  uneducated  and  had  drawn 
upon  themselves  the  jealousy  of  the  learned,  were  called  fanat- 
ics. But  many  a  philosopher  by  profession  might  well  have  ex- 
changed all  his  rhetoric  for  the  fulness  of  mind  and  heart  which 
abound  in  the  writings  of  such  fanatics.  Therefore  I  am  not 
ashamed  of  the  name  of  such  a  fanatic.  I  will  even  seek  to  make 
this  reproach  true  ;  if  I  have  not  hitherto  studied  the  writings  of 
these  men  correctly,  it  has  been  owing  to  negligence. 

Schelling  did  not  omit  to  verify  these  words.  There  were 
some  special  mental  affinities  between  himself  and  Jacob  BoeJime, 


SCHELLING. 


335 


with  whom  he  now  became  more  and  more  closely  joined.  A 
study  of  his  writings  is  indeed  indicated  in  Schelling's  works  of 
the  present  period.  One  of  the  most  famous  of  Schelling's  writ- 
ings, his  theory  of  freedom,  which  appeared  after  this  ("  Fhiloso- 
phiscJie  Untersuchungen  itber  das  Wesen  der  menschlichen 
Freiheit,^^  1809),  is  composed  entirely  in  the  spirit  of  Jacob 
Boehme.  We  begin  with  it  a  new  period  of  Schelling's  philoso- 
phizing, where  the  ivill  is  affirmed  as  the  essence  of  God,  and  we 
have  thus  a  new  definition  of  the  absolute  differing  from  every 
previous  one. 

V.  Fifth  Period  : — Attempt  at  a  Theggony  and  Cosmogo- 
ny AFTER  THE  MaNNER  OF  JaCOB  BoEHME. 

Schelling  had  much  in  common  with  Jacob  Boehme.  Both  con- 
sidered the  speculative  cognition  as  a  kind  of  immediate  intuition. 
Both  made  use  of  forms  which  mingled  the  abstract  and  the  sen- 
suous, and  interpenetrated  the  definiteness  of  logic  with  the  coloring 
of  fancy.  Both,  in  fine,  were  speculatively  in  close  contact.  The 
self-duplication  of  the  absolute  was  a  fundamental  thought  of 
Boehme.  He  started  with  the  principle,  that  the  divine  essence 
was  the  indeterminable,  infinite,  and  inconceivable,  the  absence  of 
ground  ( TJngrund).  This  absence  of  ground  now  projects  itself  in 
a  proper  feeling  of  its  abstract  and  infinite  essence,  into  the  finite, 
i.  e.  into  a  ground,  or  the  centre  of  nature,  in  the  dark  womb  of 
which  qualities  are  produced,  from  whose  harsh  collision  the  light- 
ning streams  forth,  which,  as  mind  or  principle  of  light,  is  des- 
tined to  rule  and  explain  the  struggling  powers  of  nature,  so  that 
the  God  who  has  been  raised  from  the  absence  of  ground  through 
a  ground  to  the  light  of  the  mind,  may  henceforth  move  in  an 
eternal  kingdom  of  joy.  This  theogony  of  Jacob  Boehme  is  in 
striking  accord  with  the  present  standpoint  of  Schelling.  As 
Boehme  had  apprehended  the  absolute  as  the  indeterminable  ab- 
sence of  ground,  so  had  Schelling  in  his  earlier  writings  appre- 
hended it  as  indifierence.  As  Boehme  had  distinguished  this  ab- 
sence of  ground  from  a  ground,  or  from  nature  and  from  God,  as 
the  light  of  minds,  so  had  Schelling,  in  the  writings  of  the  last 
period,  apprehended  the  absolute  as  a  self-renunciation,  and  a  re- 


336 


A  HISTOEY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


turn  back  from  this  renunciation  into  a  higher  unity  with  itself. 
We  have  here  the  three  chief  elements  of  that  history  of  God, 
around  which  Schelling's  essay  on  freedom  turns:  (1)  God  as 
indifference,  or  the  absence  of  ground ;  (2)  God  as  duplication 
into  ground  and  existence,  real  and  ideal ;  (3)  Reconciliation  of 
this  duplication,  and  elevation  of  the  original  indifference  to  iden- 
tity. The  first  element  of  the  divine  life  is  that  of  pure  indiffer- 
ence, or  indistinguishableness.  This,  which  precedes  every  thing 
existing,  may  be  called  the  original  ground,  or  the  absence  of 
ground.  The  absence  of  ground  is  not  a  product  of  opposites, 
nor  are  they  contained  implicite  in  it,  but  it  is  a  proper  essence 
separate  from  every  opposite,  and  having  no  predicate  but  that  of 
predicatelessness.  Real  and  ideal,  darkness  and  light,  can  never 
be  predicated  of  the  absence  of  ground  as  opposites ;  they  can 
only  be  affirmed  of  it  as  not-opposites  in  a  neither-nor.  From 
this  indifference  now  rises  the  duality :  the  absence  of  ground 
separates  into  two  co-eternal  beginnings,  so  that  ground  and  ex- 
istence may  become  one  through  love,  and  the  indeterminable  and 
lifeless  indifference  may  rise  to  a  determinate  and  living  identity. 
Since  nothing  is  before  or  external  to  God,  he  must  have  the 
ground  of  his  existence  in  himself.  But  this  ground  is  not  sim- 
ply logical,  as  conception,  but  real,  as  something  which  is  actual- 
ly to  be  distinguished  in  God  from  existence  ;  it  is  nature  in  God, 
an  essence  inseparable  indeed  from  him,  but  yet  distinct.  Hence 
we  cannot  assign  to  this  ground  understanding  and  will,  but  only 
desire  after  this ;  it  is  the  longing  to  produce  itself.  But  in  that 
this  ground  moves  in  its  longing  according  to  obscure  and  un- 
certain laws  like  a  swelling  sea,  there  is,  self-begotten  in  God, 
another  and  reflexive  motion,  an  inner  representation  by  which  he 
beholds  himself  in  his  image.  This  representation  is  the  eternal 
word  in  God,  which  rises  as  light  in  the  darkness  of  the  ground, 
and  endows  its  blind  longing  with  understanding.  This  under- 
standing, united  with  the  ground,  becomes  pre-creating  will.  Its 
work  is  to  give  order  to  nature,  and  to  regulate  the  hitherto  un- 
regulated ground ;  and  from  this  explanation  of  the  real  through 
the  ideal,  comes  the  creation  of  the  world.    The  development  of 


SCHELLING. 


337 


the  world  has  two  stadia :  ( 1 )  the  travail  of  light,  or  the  pro- 
gressive development  of  nature  to  man ;  (2)  the  travail  of  mind, 
or  the  development  of  mind  in  history. 

(1.)  The  progressive  development  of  nature  proceeds  from  a 
conflict  of  the  ground  with  the  understanding.  The  ground 
originally  sought  to  produce  every  thing  solely  from  itself,  but 
its  products  had  no  consistence  without  the  understanding,  and 
went  again  to  the  ground,  a  creation  which  we  see  exhibited  in 
the  extinct  classes  of  animals  and  plants  of  the  pre- Adamite 
world.  But  consecutively  and  gradually,  the  ground  admitted 
the  work  of  the  understanding,  and  every  such  step  towards  light 
is  indicated  by  a  new  class  of  nature's  beings.  In  every  creature 
of  nature  we  must,  therefore,  distinguish  two  principles  :  first, 
the  obscure  principle  through  which  the  creatures  of  nature  are 
separate  from  God,  and  have  a  particular  will ;  second,  the  divine 
principle  of  the  understanding,  of  the  universal  will.  With  irra- 
tional creatures  of  nature,  however,  these  two  principles  are  not 
yet  brought  to  unity ;  but  the  particular  will  is  simple  seeking 
and  desire,  while  the  universal  will,  without  the  individual  will, 
reigns  as  an  external  power  of  nature,  as  controlling  instinct. 

(2.)  The  two  principles,  the  particular  and  the  universal  will, 
are  first  united  in  man  as  they  are  in  the  absolute :  but  in  God 
they  are  united  inseparably,  and  in  man  separably,  for  otherwise 
God  could  not  reveal  himself  in  man.  It  is  even  this  separable- 
ness  of  the  universal  will,  and  the  particular  will,  which  makes 
good  and  evil  possible.  The  good  is  the  subjection  of  the  par- 
ticular will  to  the  universal  will,  and  the  reverse  of  this  right 
relation  is  evil.  Human  freedom  consists  in  this  possibility  of 
good  and  evil.  The  empirical  man,  however,  is  not  free,  but  his 
whole  empirical  condition  is  posited  by  a  previous  act  of  intelli- 
gence. The  man  must  act  just  as  he  does,  but  is  nevertheless 
free,  because  he  has  from  eternity  freely  made  himself  that  which 
he  now  necessarily  is.  The  history  of  the  human  race  is  founded 
for  the  most  part  on  the  struggle  of  the  individual  will  with  the 
universal  will,  as  the  history  of  nature  is  founded  on  the  struggle 
of  the  ground  with  the  understanding.  The  difi'erent  stages 
15 


338 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


through  which  evil,  as  a  historical  power,  takes  its  way  in  conflict 
with  love,  constitute  the  periods  of  the  world's  history.  Chris- 
tianity is  the  centre  of  history :  in  Christ,  the  principle  of  love 
came  in  personal  contact  with  incarnate  evil :  Christ  was  the 
mediator  to  reconcile  on  the  highest  stage  the  creation  with  God ; 
for  that  which  is  personal  can  alone  redeem  the  personal.  The 
end  of  history  is  the  reconciliation  of  the  particular  will  and  love, 
the  prevalence  of  the  universal  will,  so  that  God  shall  be  all  in 
all.    The  original  indifference  is  thus  elevated  to  identity. 

Schelling  has  given  a  farther  justification  of  this  his  idea  of 
God,  in  his  controversial  pamphlet  against  Jacobi,  (1812).  The 
charge  of  naturalism  which  Jacobi  made  against  him,  he  sought  to 
refute  by  showing  how  the  true  idea  of  God  was  a  union  of 
naturalism  and  theism.  Naturalism  seeks  to  conceive  of  God  as 
ground  of  the  world  (immanent),  while  theism  would  view  him  as 
the  world's  cause  (transcendent) :  the  true  course  is  to  unite  both 
determinations.  God  is  at  the  same  time  ground  and  cause.  It 
no  way  contradicts  the  conception  of  God  to  afiirm  that,  so  far  as 
he  reveals  himself,  he  developes  himself  from  himself,  advancing 
from  the  imperfect  to  the  perfect :  the  imperfect  is  in  fact  the 
perfect  itself,  only  in  a  state  of  becoming.  It  is  necessary  that 
this  becoming  should  be  by  stages,  in  order  that  the  fulness  of  the 
perfect  may  appear  on  all  sides.  If  there  were  no  obscure  ground, 
no  nature,  no  negative  principle  in  God,  we  could  not  speak  of  a 
consciousness  of  God.  So  long  as  the  God  of  modern  theism 
remains  the  simple  essence  which  ought  to  be  purely  essential, 
but  which  in  fact  is  without  essence,  so  long  as  an  actual  twofold- 
ness  is  not  recognized  in  God,  and  a  limiting  and  denying  energy 
(a  nature,  a  negative  principle)  is  not  placed  in  opposition  to  the 
extending  and  affirming  energy  in  God,  so  long  will  science  be 
entitled  to  make  its  denial  of  a  personal  God.  It  is  universally 
and  essentially  impossible  to  conceive  of  a  being  with  conscious- 
ness, which  has  not  been  brought  into  limit  by  some  denying  energy 
within  himself — as  universally  and  essentially  impossible  as  to 
conceive  of  a  circle  without  a  centre. 

VI.  Since  the  essay  against  Jacobi,  which  in  its  philosophical 


TRANSITION  TO  HEGEL. 


339 


content  accords  mainly  with  his  theory  of  freedom,  Schelling  has 
not  made  public  any  thing  of  importance.  He  has  often  announced 
a  work  entitled  "  Die  Weltalter,^^  which  should  contain  a  com- 
plete and  elaborate  exposition  of  his  philosophy,  but  has  always 
withdrawn  it  before  its  appearance.  Paiilus  has  surreptitiously 
brought  his  later  Berlin  lectures  before  the  public  in  a  manner 
for  which  he  has  been  greatly  blamed :  but  since  this  publication 
is  not  recognized  by  Schelling  himself,  it  cannot  be  used  as  ai: 
authentic  source  of  knowledge  of  his  philosophy.  During  this 
long  period,  Schelling  has  published  only  two  articles  of  a  philo- 
sophical content :  "  On  the  Deities  of  Samothracos,^^  1815,  and 
a  "  Critical  Preface''^  to  Becker'' s  translation  of  a  preface  of 
Cousin  J  1834.  Both  articles  are  very  characteristic  of  the  pre- 
sent standpoint  of  Schelling's  philosophizing — he  himself  calls  his 
present  philosophy  Positive  Philosophy,  or  the  Philosophy  of  My- 
thology and  Revelation, — but  as  they  give  only  intimations  of 
this,  and  do  not  reach  a  complete  exposition,  they  do  not  admit 
of  being  used  for  our  purpose. 


SECTION  XLIV. 

TRANSITION  TO  HEGEL. 

The  great  want  of  Schelling's  philosophizing,  was  its  inability 
to  furnish  a  suitable  form  for  the  philosophic  content.  Schelling 
went  through  the  list  of  all  methods,  and  at  last  abandoned  all. 
But  this  absence  of  method  into  which  he  ultimately  sank,  contra- 
dicted the  very  principle  of  his  philosophizing.  If  thought  and 
being  are  identical,  yet  form  and  content  cannot  be  indifferent  in 
respect  to  each  other.  On  the  standpoint  of  absolute  knowledge, 
there  must  be  found  for  the  absolute  content  an  absolute  form, 
which  shall  be  identical  with  the  content.  This  is  the  position 
assumed  by  Hegel.  Hegel  has  fused  the  content  of  Schelling's 
philosophy  by  means  of  the  absolute  method. 


340 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


Hegel  sprang  as  truly  from  Ficlite  as  from  Schelling ;  the 
origin  of  his  system  is  found  in  both.  His  method  is  essentially 
that  of  Fichte,  but  his  general  philosophical  standpoint  is  Schell- 
ing's.    He  has  combined  both  Fichte  and  SchelliEg. 

Hegel  has  himself,  in  his  "  Phenomenology^''''  the  first  work  in 
which  he  appeared  as  a  philosopher  on  his  own  hook,  having  pre- 
viously been  considered  as  an  adherent  of  Schelling — clearly  ex- 
pressed his  difference  from  Schelling,  which  he  comprehensively 
affirms  in  the  following  three  hits  (Schlagworte): — In  Schelling's 
philosophy,  the  absolute  is,  as  it  were,  shot  out  of  a  pistol ;  it  is 
only  the  night  in  which  every  cow  looks  black ;  when  it  is  widened 
to  a  system,  it  is  like  the  course  of  a  painter,  who  has  on  his 
palette  but  two  colors,  red  and  green,  and  who  would  cover  a 
surface  with  the  former  when  a  historical  piece  was  demanded, 
and  with  the  latter  when  a  landscape  was  required.  The  first  of 
these  charges  refers  to  the  mode  of  attaining  the  idea  of  the  abso- 
lute, viz.,  immediately,  through  intellectual  intuition ;  this  leap 
Hegel  changes,  in  his  Phenomenology,  to  a  regular  transit,  proceed- 
ing step  by  step.  The  second  charge  relates  to  the  way  in  which 
the  absolute  thus  gained  is  conceived  and  expressed,  viz.,  simply 
as  the  absence  of  all  finite  distinctions,  and  not  as  the  immanent 
positing  of  a  system  of  distinctions  within  itself.  Hegel  declares 
that  every  thing  depends  upon  apprehending  and  expressing  the 
true  not  as  substance  {i.  e.  as  negation  of  determinateness),  but  as 
subject  (as  a  positing  and  producing  of  finite  distinction).  The 
third  charge  has  to  do  with  Schelling's  manner  of  carrying  out  his 
principle  through  the  concrete  content  of  the  facts  given  in  the 
natural  and  intellectual  worlds,  viz.,  by  the  application  of  a  ready- 
made  schema  (the  opposition  of  the  ideal  and  the  real)  to  the 
objects,  instead  of  suffering  them  to  unfold  and  separate  them- 
selves from  themselves.  The  school  of  Schelling  was  especially 
given  to  this  schematizing  formalism,  and  that  which  Hegel  re- 
marks, in  the  introduction  to  his  Phenomenology,  may  very  well  be 
applied  to  it :  "  If  the  formalism  of  a  philosophy  of  nature  should 
happen  to  teach  that  the  understanding  is  electricity,  or  that  the 
animate  is  nitrogen,  the  inexperienced  might  look  upon  such  in- 


TRANSITION  TO  HEGEL. 


341 


structions  with  deep  amazement,  and  perhaps  revere  them  as  dis- 
playing the  marks  of  profound  genius.  But  the  trick  of  such  a 
wisdom  is  as  readily  learned  as  it  is  easily  practised ;  its  repetition 
is  as  insufferable  as  the  repetition  of  a  discovered  feat  of  legerde- 
main. This  method  of  affixing  to  every  thiiig  heavenly  and 
earthly,  to  all  natural  and  intellectual  forms,  the  two  determina- 
tions of  the  universal  scheme,  makes  the  universe  like  a  grocer's 
shop,  in  which  a  row  of  closed  jars  stand  Avith  their  labels  pasted 
on  them.  ^ 

The  point,  therefore,  of  greatest  difference  between  Scbelling 
and  Hegel  is  their  philosophical  method,  and  this  at  the  same 
time  forms  the  bond  of  close  connection  which  unites  Hegel  with 
Ficbte.  Thesis,  antithesis,  synthesis — this  was  the  method  by 
which  Fichte  had  sought  to  deduce  all  being  from  the  Ego,  and 
in  precisely  the  same  way  Hegel  deduces  all  being — the  intellec- 
tual and  natural  universe — from  the  thought,  only  with  this  dif- 
ference, that  with  him  that  which  was  idealistically  deduced  had 
at  the  same  time  an  objective  reality.  While  the  practical  ideal- 
ism of  Fichte  stood  related  to  the  objective  world  as  a  producer, 
and  the  ordinary  empiricism  as  a  beholder,  yet  with  Hegel  the 
speculative  (conceiving)  reason  is  at  the  same  time  productive  and 
beholding.  I  produce  (for  myself)  that  which  is  (in  itself)  without 
my  producing.  The  result  of  philosophy,  says  Hegel,  is  the 
thought  which  is  by  itself,  and  which  comprehends  in  itself  the 
universe,  and  changes  it  into  an  intelligent  world.  To  raise  all 
being  to  being  in  the  consciousness,  to  knowledge,  is  the  problem 
and  the  goal  of  philozophizing,  and  this  goal  is  reached  when  the 
mind  has  become  able  to  beget  the  whole  objective  world  from 
itself. 

In  his  first  great  work,  the  "  Phenomenology  of  the  Mind,^^ 
Hegel  sought  to  establish  the  standpoint  of  absolute  knowledge  or 
absolute  idealism.  He  furnishes  in  this  work  a  history  of  the 
phenomenal  consciousness  (whence  its  title),  a  development  of  the 
formative  epochs  of  the  consciousness  in  its  progress  to  philo- 
sophical knowledge.  The  inner  development  of  consciousness 
consists  in  this,  viz.,  that  the  peculiar  condition  in  which  it  finds 


342 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


itself  becomes  objectified  (or  conscious),  and  through  this  know- 
ledge of  its  own  being  the  consciousness  rises  ever  a  new  step  to 
a  higher  condition.  The  "  Phenomenology  "  seeks  to  show  how, 
and  out  of  wha.t  necessity  the  consciousness  advances  from  step  to 
step,  from  reality  to  being  per  se  [vom  AnsicJi  zum  Farsich), 
from  being  to  knowledge.  The  author  begins  with  the  immediate 
consciousness  as  the  lowest  step.  He  entitled  this  section :  "  The 
Sensuous  Certainty,  or  the  This  and  the  Mine^  At  this  stage 
the  question  is  asked  the  Ego  :  what  is  this,  or  what  is  here  ?  and 
it  answers,  e.  g.  the  tree ;  and  to  the  question,  what  is  now  ?  it 
answers  now  is  the  night.  But  if  we  turn  ourselves  around,  here 
is  not  a  tree  but  a  house ;  and  if  we  write  down  the  second  answer, 
and  look  at  it  again  after  a  little  time,  we  find  that  now  is  no 
longer  night  but  mid-day.  The  this  becomes,  therefore,  a  not- 
this,  i.  e.  a  universal.  And  very  naturally ;  for  if  I  say :  this 
piece  of  paper,  yet  each  and  every  paper  is  a  this  piece  of  paper, 
and  I  have  only  said  the  universal.  By  such  inner  dialectics  the 
whole  field  of  the  immediate  certainty  of  the  sense  in  perception 
is  gone  over.  In  this  way — ^since  every  formative  step  (every 
form)  of  the  consciousness  of  the  philosophizing  subject  is  in- 
volved in  contradictions,  and  is  carried  by  this  immanent  dialec- 
tics to  a  higher  form  of  consciousness — this  process  of  develop- 
ment goes  on  till  the  contradiction  is  destroyed,  i.  e.  till  all 
strangeness  between  subject  and  object  disappears,  and  the  mind 
rises  to  a  perfect  self-knowledge  and  self-certainty.  To  charac- 
terize briefly  the  different  steps  of  this  process,  we  might  say  that 
the  consciousness  is  first  found  as  a  certainty  of  the  sense,  or  as 
the  this  and  the  mine  ;  next  as  perception,  which  apprehends  the 
objective  as  a  thing  with  its  properties ;  and  then  as  understand- 
ing, i.  e.  apprehending  the  objects  as  being  reflected  in  itself,  or 
distinguishing  between  power  and  expression,  being  and  manifes- 
tation, outer  and  inner.  From  this  point  the  consciousness,  which 
has  only  recognized  itself,  its  own  pure  being  in  its  objects  and 
their  determinations,  and  for  which  therefore  every  other  thing 
than  itself  has,  as  such,  no  significance,  becomes  the  self-like  Ego, 
and  rises  to  the  truth  and  certainty  of  itself  to  self-consciousness. 


HEGEL. 


348 


The  self-consciousness  become  universal,  or  as  reason,  now  tra- 
verses also  a  series  of  development-steps,  until  it  manifests  itself 
as  spirit,  as  the  reason  which,  in  accord  with  all  rationality,  and 
satisfied  with  the  rational  world  without,  extends  itself  over  the 
natural  and  intellectual  universe  as  its  kingdom,  in  which  it  finds 
itself  at  home.  Mind  now  passes  through  its  stages  of  uncon- 
strained morality,  culture  and  refinement,  ethics  and  the  ethical 
view  of  the  world  to  religion ;  and  religion  itself  in  its  perfection, 
as  revealed  religion  becomes  absolute  knowledge.  At  this  last 
stage  being  and  thought  are  no  more  separate,  being  is  no  longer 
an  object  for  the  thought,  but  the  thought  itself  is  the  object  of 
the  thought.  Science  is  nothing  other  than  the  true  knowledge 
of  the  mind  concerning  itself.  In  the  conclusion  of  the  "  Phe- 
nomenology,^^ Hegel  casts  the  following  retrospect  on  the  course 
which  he  has  laid  down  :  "  The  goal  which  is  to  be  reached,  viz., 
absolute  knowledge,  or  the  mind  knowing  itself  as  mind,  requires 
us  to  take  notice  of  minds  as  they  are  in  themselves,  and  the 
organization  of  their  kingdom.  These  elements  are  preserved, 
and  furnished  to  us  either  by  history,  where  we  look  at  the  side 
of  the  mind's  free  existence  as  it  accidentally  appears,  or  by  the 
science  of  phenomenal  knowledge,  where  we  look  at  the  side  of 
the  mind's  ideal  organization.  These  two  sources  taken  together, 
as  the  ideal  history,  give  us  the  real  history  and  the  true  being 
of  the  absolute  spirit,  the  actuality,  truth,  and  certainty  of  his 
throne,  without  which  he  were  lifeless  and  alone ;  only  '  from  the 
cup  of  this  kingdom  of  minds  does  there  stream  forth  for  him  his 
infinity.' " 


SECTION  XLV. 

HEGEL. 

George  Wilhelm  Friedrich  Hegel  was  born  at  Stuttgart,  the 
27th  of  August,  1770.  In  his  eighteenth  year  he  entered  the 
university  of  Tubingen,  in  order  to  devote  himself  to  the  study 


344 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


of  theology.  During  his  course  of  study  here,  he  attracted  no 
marked  attention;  Schelling,  who  was  his  junior  in  years,  shone 
far  beyond  all  his  cotemporaries.  After  leaving  Tubingen,  he 
took  a  situation  as  private  tutor,  first  in  Switzerland,  and  after- 
wards in  Frankfort-on-the-Main  till  1801,  when  he  settled  down 
at  Jena.  At  first  he  was  regarded  as  a  disciple,  and  defender  of 
Schelling's  philosophy,  and  as  such  he  wrote  in  1801  his  first 
minor  treatise  on  the  "  Difference  hetiveen  Fichte  and  Scliellingy 
Soon  afterwards  he  became  associated  with  Schelling  in  publish- 
ing the  <'  CriticalJournal  of  Philosophy,''^  1802-8,  for  which  he 
furnished  a  number  of  important  articles.  His  labors  as  an  aca- 
demical teacher  met  at  first  with  but  little  encouragement ;  he 
gave  his  first  lecture  to  only  four  hearers.  Yet  in  1806  he 
became  professor  in  the  university,  though  the  political  catastro- 
phe in  which  the  country  was  soon  afterwards  involved,  deprived 
him  again  of  the  place.  Amid  the  cannon's  thunder  of  the  battle 
of  Jena,  he  finished  "  the  Phenomenology  of  the  Mindj'^  his  first 
great  and  independent  work,  the  crown  of  his  Jena  labors.  He 
was  subsequently  in  the  habit  of  calling  this  book  which  appeared 
in  1807,  his  "  voyage  of  discovery."  From  Jena,  Hegel  for  want 
of  the  means  of  subsistence  went  to  Bamberg,  where  for  two  years 
he  was  editor  of  a  political  journal  published  there.  In  the 
fall. of  1808,  he  became  rector  of  the  gymnasium  at  Nuremberg. 
In  this  situation  he  wrote  his  Logic,  1812-16.  All  his  works 
were  produced  slowly,  and  he  first  properly  began  his  literary  ac- 
tivity as  Schelling  finished  his.  In  1816,  he  received  a  call  to  a 
professorship  of  philosophy  at  Heidelberg,  where  in  1817  he  pub- 
lished his  "  Encyclopcedia  of  the  philosophical  sciences,^''  in  which 
for  the  first  time  he  showed  the  whole  circuit  of  his  system.  But 
his  peculiar  fame,  and  his  far-reaching  activity,  dates  first  from 
his  call  to  Berlin  in  1818.  It  was  at  Berlin  that  he  surrounded 
himself  with  an  extensive  and  very  actively  scientific  school,  and 
where  through  his  connection  with  the  Prussian  government  he 
gained  a  political  influence  and  acquired  a  reputation  for  his  phi- 
losophy, as  the  philosophy  of  the  State,  though  this  neither  speaks 
favorably  for  its  inner  purity,  nor  its  moral  credit    Yet  in  his 


HEGEL. 


345 


'^Philosophy  of  Bights,^^  whicli  appeared  in  1821  (a  time,  to  be 
Bure,  when  the  Prussian  State  had  not  yet  shown  any  decidedly 
anti-constitutional  tendency),  Hegel  does  not  deny  the  political 
demands  of  the  present  age ;  he  declares  in  favor  of  popular  re 
presentation,  freedom  of  the  press,  and  publicity  of  judicial  pro 
ceedings,  trial  by  jury,  and  an  administrative  independence  of 
corporations. 

In  Berlin,  Hegel  gave  lectures  upon  almost  every  branch  of 
philosophy,  and  these  have  been  published  by  his  disciples  and 
friends  after  his  death.  His  manner  as  a  lecturer  was  stammer- 
ing, clumsy,  and  unadorned,  but  was  still  not  without  a  peculiar 
attraction  as  the  immediate  expression  of  profound  thoughtfulness. 
His  social  intercourse  was  more  with  the  uncultivated  than  with 
the  learned ;  he  was  not  fond  of  shining  as  a  genius  in  social  cir- 
cles. In  1829  he  became  rector  of  the  university,  an  office  which 
he  administered  in  a  more  practical  manner  than  Fichte  had 
done.  Hegel  died  with  the  cholera,  Nov.  14th,  1831,  the  day  also 
of  Leibnitz's  death.  He  rests  in  the  same  churchyard  with 
Solger  and  Fichte,  near  by  the  latter,  and  not  far  from  the  former. 
His  writings  and  lectures  form  seventeen  volumes  which  have  ap- 
peared since  1832:  Vol.  I.  Minor  Articles;  II.  Phenomenology; 
III-Y.  Logic;  YL-YII.  Encyclopedia;  VIII.  Philosphy  of 
Rights;  IX.  Philosophy  of  History;  X.  Esthetics;  XI.-XIL  Phi- 
losophy of  Religion ;  XIII.-XY.  History  of  Philosophy  ;  XYI- 
XYII.  Miscellanies.    His  life  has  been  written  by  Rosenkranz. 

Hegel's  system  may  be  divided  in  a  number  of  ways.  The 
best  mode  is  by  connecting  it  with  Schelling.  Schellings's  abso- 
lute was  the  identity  or  the  indifference  point  of  the  ideal  and  the 
real.  From  this  Hegel's  threefold  division  immediately  follows. 
(1)  The  exposition  of  the  indifference  point,  the  development  of 
the  pure  conceptions  or  determinations  in  thought,  which  lie  at  the 
basis  of  all  natural  and  intellectual  life;  in  other  words,  the  logi- 
cal unfolding  of  the  absolute, — the  science  of  logic.  (2)  The 
development  of  the  real  world  or  of  nature — natural  philosophy. 
(3)  The  development  of  the  ideal  world,  or  of  mind  as  it  shows 
itself  concretely  in  right,  morals,  the  state,  art,  religion,  and 
15* 


346 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


science. — Philosophy  of  Mind.  These  three  parts  of  the  system 
represent  the  three  elements  of  the  absolute  method,  thesis,  anti- 
thesis, synthesis.  The  absolute  is  at  first  pure,  and  immaterial 
thought ;  secondly,  it  is  differentiation  (Andersseyn)  of  the  pure 
thought  or  its  diremption(verzerrw?2<7)  in  space  and  time — nature ; 
thirdly,  it  returns  from  this  self-estrangement  to  itself,  destroys 
the  differentiation  of  nature,  and  thus  becomes  actual  self-know- 
ing thought  or  mind. 

I.  Science  of  Logic. — The  Hegelian  logic  is  the  scientific 
exposition  and  development  of  the  pure  conceptions  of  reason, 
those  conceptions  or  categories  which  lie  at  the  basis  of  all  thought 
and  being,  and  which  determine  the  subjective  knowledge  as 
truly  as  they  form  the  indwelling  soul  of  the  objective  reality; 
in  a  word,  those  ideas  in  which  the  ideal  and  the  real  have  their 
point  of  coincidence.  The  domain  of  logic,  says  Hegel,  is  the 
truth,  as  it  is  -per  se  in  its  native  character.  It  is  as  Hegel  him- 
self figuratively  expresses  it,  the  representation  of  Grod  as  he  is 
in  his  eternal  being,  before  the  creation  of  the  world  or  a 
finite  mind.  In  this  respect  it  is,  to  be  sure,  a  domain  of  shad- 
ows ;  but  these  shadows  are,  on  the  other  hand,  those  simple 
essences  freed  from  all  sensuous  matters,  in  whose  diamond  net 
the  whole  universe  is  constructed. 

Different  philosophers  had  already  made  a  thankworthy  be- 
ginning towards  collecting  and  examining  the  pure  conceptions  of 
the  reason,  as  Aristotle  in  his  categories,  Wolff  in  his  ontology, 
and  Kant  in  his  transcendental  analytics.  But  they  had  neither 
completely  collected,  nor  critically  sifted,  nor  (Kant  excepted) 
derived  them  from  one  principle,  but  had  only  taken  them  up  em- 
pirically, and  treated  them  lexicologically.  But  in  opposition  to 
this  course,  Hegel  attempted,  (1)  to  completely  collect  the  pure 
art-conceptions ;  (2)  to  critically  sift  them  (^.  e.  to  exclude  every 
thing  but  pure  thought) ;  and  (3) — which  is  the  most  character- 
istic peculiarity  of  the  Hegelian  logic — to  derive  these  dialecti- 
cally  from  one  another,  and  carry  them  out  to  an  internally  con- 
nected system  of  pure  reason.  Hegel  starts  with  the  view,  that 
in  every  conception  of  the  reason,  every  other  is  contained  impH- 


HEGEL. 


347 


citey  and  may  be  dialectically  developed  from  it.  Fichte  had  al- 
ready claimed  that  the  reason  must  deduce  the  whole  system  of 
knowledge  purely  from  itself,  without  any  thing  taken  for  granted ; 
that  some  principle  must  he  sought  which  should  be  of  itself  cer- 
tain, and  need  no  farther  proof,  and  from  which  every  thing  else 
could  be  derived.  Hegel  holds  fast  to  this  thought.  Starting 
from  the  simplest  conception  of  reason,  that  of  pure  being,  which 
needs  no  farther  establishing,  he  seeks  from  this,  by  advancing 
from  one  conception  ever  to  another  and  a  richer  one,  to  deduce 
the  whole  system  of  the  pure  knowledge  of  reason.  The  lever  of 
this  development  is  the  dialectical  method. 

Hegel's  dialectical  method  is  partly  taken  from  Plato,  and 
partly  from  Fichte.  The  conception  of  negation  is  Platonic.  All 
negation,  says  Hegel,  is  position,  ajQ&rmation.  If  a  conception  is 
negated,  the  result  is  not  the  pure  nothing — a  pure  negative,  but 
a  concrete  positive  ;  there  results  a  new  conception  which  extends 
around  the  negation  of  the  preceding  one.  The  negation  of  the  one 
e.  g.  is  the  conception  of  the  many.  In  this  way  Hegel  makes  nega- 
tion a  vehicle  for  dialectical  progress.  Every  pre-supposed  concep- 
tion is  denied,  and  from  its  negation  a  higher  and  richer  conception 
is  gained.  This  is  connected  with  the  method  of  Fichte,  which 
posits  a  fundamental  synthesis ;  and  by  analyzing  this,  seeks  its 
antitheses,  and  then  unites  again  these  antitheses  through  a  second 
synthesis, — e.  g,  being,  nothing,  becoming,  quality,  quantity, 
measure,  &c.  This  method,  which  is  at  the  same  time  analytical 
and  synthetical,  Hegel  has  carried  through  the  whole  system  of 
science. 

We  now  proceed  to  a  brief  survey  of  the  Hegelian  Logic.  It 
is  divided  into  three  parts ;  the  doctrine  of  heing^  the  doctrine  of 
essence^  and  the  doctrine  of  conception. 

1.  The  Doctrine  OF  Being.  (1.)  Quality. --^oiencQhegmsYfiih. 
the  immediate  and  indeterminate  conception  of  being.  This,  in  its 
want  of  content  and  emptiness,  is  nothing  more  than  a  pure  negation, 
a  nothing.  These  two  conceptions  are  thus  as  absolutely  identical  as 
they  are  absolutely  opposed;  each  of  the  two  disappears  immediate- 
ly in  its  contrary.  This  oscillation  of  the  two  is  the  pure  becoming^ 


348 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


which,  if  it  be  a  transition  from  nothing  to  being,  we  call  arising. 
or,  in  the  reverse  case,  we  call  it  a  departing.  The  still  and  sim- 
ple precipitate  of  this  process  of  arising  and  departing,  is  exist- 
ence (Daseyn).  Existence  is  being  with  a  determinateness,  or  it 
is  quality  ;  more  closely,  it  is  reality  or  limited  existence.  Lim- 
ited existence  excludes  every  other  from  itself.  This  reference 
to  itself,  which  is  seen  through  its  negative  relation  to  every  other, 
we  call  being  per  se  {FdrsicTiseyn).  Being  per  se  which  refers 
itself  only  to  itself,  and  repels  every  other  from  itself,  is  the  one. 
But,  by  means  of  this  repelling,  the  one  posits  immediately  many 
ones.  But  the  many  ones  are  not  distinguished  from  each  other. 
One  is  what  the  other  is.  The  many  are  therefore  one.  But  the 
one  is  just  as  truly  the  manifold.  For  its  exclusion  is  the  posit- 
ing of  its  contrary,  or  it  posits  itself  thereby  as  manifold.  By 
this  dialectic  of  attraction  and  repulsion,  quality  passes  over  into 
quantity  :  for  indifference  in  respect  of  distinction  or  qualitative 
determinateness  is  quantity. 

(2. )  Quantity. — Quantity  is  determination  of  greatness,  which, 
as  such,  is  indifferent  in  respect  of  quality.  In  so  far  as  the 
greatness  contains  many  ones  distinguishably  within  itself,  it  is  a 
discrete,  or  has  the  element  of  discretion  ;  but  on  the  other  hand, 
in  so  far  as  the  many  ones  are  similar,  and  the  greatness  is  thus 
indistinguishable,  it  is  continuous,  or  has  the  element  of  con- 
tinuity. Each  of  these  two  determinations  is  at  the  same  time 
identical  with  the  other  ;  discretion  cannot  be  conceived  without 
continuity,  nor  continuity  without  discretion.  The  existence  of 
quantity,  or  the  limited  quantity,  is  the  quantum.  The  quan- 
tum has  also  manifoldness  and  unity  in  itself ;.  it  is  the  enumera- 
tion of  the  unities,  i..  e.  number.  Corresponding  to  the  quantum  **' 
or  the  extensive  greatness,  is  the  intensive  greatness  or  the  degree. 
With  the  conception  of  degree,  so  far  as  degree  is  simple  deter- 
minateness, quantity  approaches  quality  again.  The  unity  of 
quantity  and  quality  is  the  measure. 

(3.)  The  measure  is  a  qualitative  quantum,  a  quantum  on 
which  the  quality  is  dependent.  An  example  of  quantity  deter- 
mining the  quality  of  a  definite  object  is  found  in  the  temperature 


HEGEL. 


349 


of  water,  which  decides  whether  the  water  shall  remain  water  or 
turn  to  ice  or  steam.  Here  the  quantum  of  heat  actually  consti- 
tutes the  quality  of  the  water.  Quality  and  quantity  are,  there- 
fore, ideal  determinations,  perpetually  turning  around  on  one 
being,  on  a  third,  which  is  distinguished  from  the  immediate  what 
and  how  much  (quality  and  quantity)  of  a  thing.  This  third  is 
the  essence,  which  is  the  negation  of  every  thing  immediate,  or 
quality  independent  of  the  immediate  being.  Essence  is  being 
in  se,  being  divided  in  itself,  a  self-separation  of  being.  Hence 
the  twofoldness  of  all  determinations  of  essence. 

2.  The  Doctrine  of  Essence.  (1.)  The  Essence  as  such. 
The  essence  as  reflected  being  is  the  reference  to  itself  only  as  it  is 
a  reference  to  something  other.  We  apply  to  this  being  the  term 
reflected  analogously  with  the  reflection  of  light,  which,  when  it 
falls  on  a  mirror,  is  thrown  back  by  it.  As  now  the  reflected  light 
is,  through  its  reference  to  another  object,  something  mediated  or 
posited,  so  the  reflected  being  is  that  which  is  shown  to  be  mediat- 
ed or  grounded  through  another.  From  the  fact  that  philosophy 
makes  its  problem  to  know  the  essence  of  things,  the  immediate 
being  of  things  is  represented  as  a  covering  or  curtain  behind 
which  the  essence  is  concealed.  If,  therefore,  we  speak  of  the 
essence  of  an  object,  the  immediate  being  standing  over  against 
the  essence  (for  without  this  the  essence  cannot  be  conceived),  is 
set  down  to  a  mere  negative,  to  an  appearance.  The  being  ap- 
pears in  the  essence.  The  essence  is,  therefore,  the  being  as 
appearance  in  itself.  The  essence  when  conceived  in  distinction 
from  the  appearance,  gives  the  conception  of  the  essential,  and 
that  which  only  appears  in  the  essence,  is  the  essenceless,  or  the 
unessential.  But  since  the  essential  has  a  being  only  in  distinc- 
tion from  the  unessential,  it  follows  that  the  latter  is  essential  to 
the  former,  which  needs  its  unessential  just  as  much  as  the  unes- 
sential needs  it.  Each  of  the  two,  therefore,  appears  in  the  other, 
or  there  takes  place  between  them  a  reciprocal  reference  which  we 
call  reflection.  We  have,  therefore,  to  do  in  this  whole  sphere 
with  determinations  of  reflection,  with  determinations,  each  one 
of  which  refers  to  the  other,  and  cannot  be  conceived  without  it 


350  A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHT.  ^ 

(e.  g.  positive  and  negative,  ground  and  sequence,  thing  and  pro- 
perties, content  and  form,  power  and  expression).  We  have, 
therefore,  in  the  development  of  the  essence,  those  same  deter- 
minations which  we  found  in  the  development  of  being,  only  no 
longer  in  an  immediate,  but  in  a  reflected  form.  Instead  of  being 
and  nothing,  we  have  now  the  forms  of  the  positive  and  negative ; 
instead  of  the  there-existent  {Daseyn),  we  now  have  existence. 

Essence  is  reflected  being,  a  reference  to  itself,  which,  how- 
ever, is  mediated  through  a  reference  to  something  other  which 
appears  in  it.  This  reflected  reference  to  itself  we  call  identity 
(which  is  unsatisfactorily  and  abstractly  expressed  in  the  so-called 
first  principle  of  thought,  that  A=A).  This  identity,  as  a  nega- 
tivity referring  itself  to  itself,  as  a  repulsion  of  its  own  from  Itself, 
contains  essentially  the  determination  of  distinction.  The  imme- 
diate and  external  distinction  is  the  difference.  The  essential  dis- 
tinction, the  distinction  in  itself,  is  the  antithesis  {positive  and 
negative).  The  self-opposition  of  the  essence  is  the  contradiction. 
The  antithesis  of  identity  and  distinction  is  put  in  agreement  in 
the  conception  of  the  ground.  Since  now  the  essence  distinguishes 
itself  from  itself,  there  is  the  essence  as  identical  with  itself  or 
the  ground^  and  the  essence  as  distinguished  from  itself  or  the 
sequence.  In  the  category  of  ground  and  sequence  the  same 
thing,  i.  e.  the  essence,  is  twice  posited ;  the  grounded  and  the 
ground  are  one  and  the  same  content,  which  makes  it  difficult  to 
define  the  ground  except  through  the  sequence,  or  the  sequence 
except  through  the  ground.  The  two  can,  therefore,  be  divided 
only  by  a  powerful  abstraction ;  but  because  the  two  are  identi- 
cal, it  is  peculiarly  a  formalism  to  apply  this  category.  If  reflec- 
tion would  inquire  after  a  ground,  it  is  because  it  would  see  the 
thing  as  it  were  in  a  twofold  relation,  once  in  its  immediateness, 
and  then  as  posited  through  a  ground. 

(2.)  Essence  and  Phenomenon. — The  phenomenon  is  the  ap- 
pearance which  the  essence  fills,  and  which  is  hence  no  longer 
essenceless.  There  is  no  appearance  without  essence,  and  no 
essence  which  may  not  enter  into  phenomenon.  It  is  one  and  the 
same  content  which  at  one  time  is  taken  as  essence,  and  at  another 


HEGEL. 


351 


as  phenomenon.  In  the  phenomenal  essence  we  recognize  the 
positive  element  which  has  hitherto  been  called  ground,  but  which 
we  now  name  content,  and  the  negative  element  which  we  call  the 
form.  Every  essence  is  a  unity  of  content  and  form,  i.  e.  it  exists. 
In  distinction  from  immediate  being,  we  call  that  being  which  has 
proceeded  from  some  ground,  existence,  i.  e.  grounded  being. 
When  we  view  the  essence  as  existing,  we  call  it  thing.  In  the 
relation  of  a  thing  to  its  properties  we  have  a  repetition  of  the  re- 
lation of  form  and  content.  The  properties  show  us  the  thing  in 
respect  of  its  form,  but  it  is  thing  in  respect  of  its  content.  The 
reflation  between  the  thing  and  its  properties  is  commonly  indica- 
ted by  the  verb  to  have  (e.  g.  the  thing  has  properties),  in  order 
to  distinguish  between  the  two.  The  essence  as  a  negative  refer- 
ence to  itself,  and  as  repelling  itself  from  itself  in  order  to  a 
reflection  in  an  alterum,  is  power  and  expression.  In  this  category, 
like  all  the  other  categories  of  essence,  one  and  the  same  content 
is  posited  twice.  The  power  can  only  be  explained  from  the  ex- 
pression, and  the  expression  only  from  the  power ;  consequently 
every  explanation  of  which  this  category  avails  itself,  is  tautolo- 
gical. To  regard  power  as  uncognizable,  is  only  a  self-deception 
of  the  understanding  respecting  its  own  doing. — A  higher  expres- 
sion for  the  category  of  power  and  expression  is  the  category  of 
inner  and  outer.  The  latter  category  stands  higher  than  the 
former,  because  power  needs  some  solicitation  to  express  itself, 
but  the  inner  is  the  essence  spontaneously  manifesting  itself. 
Both  of  these,  the  inner  and  the  outer,  are  also  identical ;  neither 
is  without  the  other.  That,  e.  g.  which  the  man  is  internally  in 
respect  of  his  character,  is  he  also  externally  in  his  action.  The 
truth  of  this  relation  will  be,  therefore,  the  identity  of  inner  and 
outer,  of  essence  and  phenomenon,  viz. : 

(3.)  Actuality. — Actuality  must  be  added  as  a  third  to  being 
and  existence.  In  the  actuality,  the  phenomenon  is  a  complete 
and  adequate  manifestation  of  the  essence.  The  true  actuality 
is,  therefore  (in  opposition  to  possibility  and  contingency),  a 
necessary  being,  a  rational  necessity.  The  well-known  Hegelian 
sentence  that  every  thing  is  rational,  and  every  thing  rational  is 


352 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


actual,  is  seen  in  this  apprehension  of  "  actuality  "  to  be  a  simple 
tautology.  The  necessary,  when  posited  as  its  own  ground,  iden- 
tical with  itself,  is  substance.  The  phenomenal  side,  the  unessen- 
tial in  the  substance,  and  the  contingent  in  the  necessary,  are  acci- 
deuces.  These  are  no  longer  related  to  the  substance,  as  the 
phenomenon  to  the  essence,  or  the  outer  to  the  inner,  i.  e.  as  an 
adequate  manifestation ;  they  are  only  transitory  affections  of  the 
substance,  accidentally  changing  phenomenal  forms,  like  sea  waves 
on  the  water  of  the  sea.  They  are  not  produced  by  the  substance, 
but  are  rather  destroyed  in  it.  The  relation  of  substance  leads  to 
the  relation  of  cause.  In  the  relation  of  cause  there  is  one  and 
the  same  thing  posited  on  the  one  side  as  cause,  and  on  the  other 
side  as  effect.  The  cause  of  warmth  is  warmth,  and  its  effect  is 
again  warmth.  The  effect  is  a  higher  conception  than  the  acci- 
dence, since  it  actually  stands  over  against  the  cause,  and  the  cause 
itself  passes  over  into  effect.  So  far,  however,  as  each  side  in  the 
relation  of  cause  presupposes  the  other,  we  shall  find  the  true 
relation  one  in  which  each  side  is  at  the  same  time  cause  and  effect, 
i.  e.  reciprocal  action.  Reciprocal  action  is  a  higher  relation 
than  causality,  because  these  is  no  pure  causality.  There  is  no 
effect  without  counteraction.  "We  leave  the  province  of  essence 
with  the  category  of  reciprocal  action.  All  the  categories  of 
essence  had  shown  themselves  as  a  duplex  of  two  sides,  but  when 
we  come  to  the  category  of  reciprocal  action,  the  opposition  be- 
tween cause  and  effect  is  destroyed,  and  they  meet  together ;  unity 
thus  takes  again  the  place  of  duplicity.  We  have,  therefore, 
again  a  being  which  coincides  with  mediate  being.  This  unity  of 
being  and  essence,  this  inner  or  realized  necessity,  is  the  conception. 

8.  The  Doctrine  of  the  Coxceptiox. — A  conception  is  a 
rational  necessity.  We  can  only  have  a  conception  of  that  whose 
true  necessity  we  have  recognized.  The  conception  is,  therefore, 
the  truly  actual,  the  peculiar  essence ;  because  it  states  as  well 
that  which  is  actual  as  that  which  should  be. 

(1.)  The  subjective  conception  contains  the  elements  of  uni- 
versality (the  conception  of  species),  particularity  (ground  of 
classification,  logical  difference),  and  individuality  (species — logi- 


HEGEL. 


353 


cal  difference).  The  conception  is  therefore  a  unity  of  that  which 
is  distinct.  The  self-separation  of  the  conception  is  the  judgment. 
In  the  judgment,  the  conception  appears  as  self-excluding  dual- 
ity. The  twofoldness  is  seen  in  the  difiference  between  subject 
and  predicate,  and  the  unity  in  the  copula.  Progress  in  the  dif- 
ferent forms  of  judgment,  consists  in  this,  viz.,  that  the  copula 
fills  itself  more  and  more  with  the  conception.  But  thus  the 
judgment  passes  over  into  the  conclusion  or  inference,  i.  e.  to  the 
conception  which  is  identical  with  itself  through  the  conception. 
In  the  inference  one  conception  is  concluded  with  a  third  through 
a  second.  The  different  figures  of  the  conclusion  are  the  differ- 
erent  steps  in  the  self-mediation  of  the  conception.  The  concep- 
tion is  when  it  mediates  itself  with  itself  and  the  conclusion  is  no 
longer  subjective ;  it  is  no  longer  my  act,  but  an  objective  rela- 
tion is  fulfilled  in  it. 

(2.)  Ohjectivity  is  a  reality  only  of  the  conception.  The  ob- 
jective conception  has*  three  steps, — Mechanism^  or  the  indifferent 
relation  of  objects  to  each  other ;  Chemism,  or  the  interpenetra- 
tion  of  objects  and  their  neutralization ;  Teleology,  or  the  inner 
design  of  objects.    The  end  accomplishing  itself  or  the  self-end  is, 

(8.)  The  idea. — The  idea  is  the  highest  logical  definition  of 
the  absolute.  The  immediate  existence  of  the  idea,  we  call  life, 
or  process  of  life.  Every  thing  living  is  self-end  immanent-end. 
The  idea  posited  in  its  difference  as  a  relation  of  objective  and 
subjective,  is  the  true  and  good.  The  true  is  the  objective  ration- 
ality subjectively  posited;  the  good  is  the  subjective  rationality 
carried  into  the  objectivity.  Both  conceptions  together  consti- 
tute the  absolute  idea,  which  is  just  as  truly  as  it  should  be, 
i.  e.  the  good  is  just  as  truly  actualized  as  the  true  is  living  and 
self-realizing. 

The  absolute  and  full  idea  is  in  space,  because  it  discharges 
itself  from  itself,  as  its  reflection ;  this  its  being  in  space  is 
Nature. 

II.  The  Science  op  Nature. — Nature  is  the  idea  in  the 
form  of  differentiation.  It  is  the  idea  externalizing  itself;  it 
is  the  mind  estranged  from  itself.    The  unity  of  the  conception 


354 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


is  therefore  concealed  in  nature,  and  since  philosopliy  makes  it  ita 
problem  to  seek  out  the  intelligence  which  is  hidden  in  nature, 
and  to  pursue  the  process  by  which  nature  loses  its  own  charac- 
ter and  becomes  mind,  it  should  not  forget  that  the  essence  of 
nature  consists  in  being  which  has  externalized  itself,  and  that 
the  products  of  nature  neither  have  a  reference  to  themselves,  nor 
correspond  to  the  conception,  but  grow  up  in  unrestrained  and 
unbridled  contingency.  Nature  is  a  bacchanalian  god  who  nei- 
ther bridles  nor  checks  himself.  It  therefore  represents  no  ideal 
succession,  rising  ever  in  regular  order,  but,  on  the  contrary,  it 
every  where  obliterates  all  essential  limits  by  its  doubtful  struc- 
tures, which  always  defy  every  fixed  classification.  Because  it  is 
impossible  to  throw  the  determinations  of  the  conception  over 
nature,  natural  philosophy  is  forced  at  every  point,  as  it  were,  to 
capitulate  between  the  world  of  concrete  individual  structures, 
and  the  regulative  of  the  speculative  idea. 

Natural  philosophy  has  its  beginning,  its  course,  and  its  end. 
It  begins  with  the  first  or  immediate  determination  of  nature, 
with  the  abstract  universality  of  its  being  extra  se,  space  and 
matter ;  its  end  is  the  dissevering  of  the  mind  from  nature  in 
the  form  of  a  rational  and  self-conscious  individuality — man ;  the 
problem  which  it  has  to  solve  is,  to  show  the  intermediate  link 
between  these  two  extremes,  and  to  follow  out  successively  the  in- 
creasingly successful  struggles  of  nature  to  raise  itself  to  self-con- 
sciousness, to  man.  In  this  process,  nature  passes  through  three 
principal  stages. 

1.  Mechanics,  or  matter  and  an  ideal  system  of  matter.  Mat- 
ter is  the  being  extra  se  [AussersicTiseyn)  of  nature,  in  its 
most  universal  form.  Yet  it  shows  at  the  outset  that  tendency 
to  being  per  se  which  forms  the  guiding  thread  of  natural  philos- 
ophy— gravity.  Gravity  is  the  being  in  se  (Insichseyn)  of  mat- 
ter ;  it  is  the  desire  of  matter  to  come  to  itself,  and  shows  the  first 
trace  of  subjectivity.  The  centre  of  gravity  of  a  body  is  the  one 
which  it  seeks.  This  same  tendency  of  bringing  all  the  manifold 
unto  being  jper  se  lies  at  the  basis  of  the  solar  system  and  of  uni- 
versal gravitation.    The  centrality  which  is  the  fundamental  con- 


HEGEL. 


355 


ception  of  gravity,  becomes  here  a  system,  whicli  is  in  fact  a 
rational  system  so  far  as  the  form  of  the  orbit,  the  rapidity  of 
motion,  or  the  time  of  revolution  may  be  referred  to  mathematical 
laws. 

2.  Physics. — But  matter  possesses  no  individuality.  Even 
in  astronomy  it  is  not  the  bodies  themselves,  but  only  their  geo- 
metrical relations  which  interest  us.  We  have  here  at  the  outset 
to  treat  of  quantitative  and  not  yet  of  qualitative  determinations. 
Yet  in  the  solar  system,  matter  has  found  its  centre,  itself.  Its 
abstract  and  hollow  being  in  se  has  resolved  itself  into  form. 
Matter  now,  as  possessing  a  quality,  is  an  object  of  physics.  In 
physics  we  have  to  do  with  matter  which  has  particularized  itself 
in  a  body,  in  an  individuality.  To  this  province  belongs  inor- 
ganic nature,  its  forms  and  reciprocal  references. 

3.  Organics. — Inorganic  nature,  which  was  the  object  of  phys- 
ics, destroys  itself  in  the  chemical  process.  In  the  chemical  pro- 
cess, the  inorganic  body  loses  all  its  properties  (cohesion,  color, 
shining,  sound,  transparency,  &c.),  and  thus  shows  the  evanes- 
cence of  its  existence  and  that  relativity  which  is  its  being.  This 
chemical  process  is  overcome  by  the  organic,  the  living  process  of 
nature.  True,  the  living  body  is  ever  on  the  point  of  passing 
over  to  the  chemical  process ;  oxygen,  hydrogen  and  salt,  are 
always  entering  into  a  living  organism,  but  their  chemical  action 
is  always  overcome ;  the  living  body  resists  the  chemical  process 
till  it  dies.  Life  is  self-preservation,  self-end.  While  therefore 
nature  in  physics  had  risen  to  individuality,  in  organics,  it  pro- 
gresses to  subjectivity.  The  idea,  as  life,  represents  itself  in  three 
stages. 

(1.)  The  general  image  of  life  in  geological  organism,  or  tho 
mineral  kingdom.  Yet  the  mineral  kingdom  is  the  result,  and 
the  residuum  of  a  process  of  life  and  formation  already  passed. 
The  primitive  rock  is  the  stiffened  crystal  of  life,  and  the  geologi- 
cal earth  is  a  giant  corpse.  The  present  life  which  produces  itself 
eternally  anew,  breaks  forth  as  the  first  moving  of  subjectivity, 

(2.)  In  the  organism  ofj)lants  or  the  vegetable  kingdom.  The 
plant  rises  indeed  to  a  formative  process,  to  a  process  of  assimila- 


356 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


tion,  and  to  a  process  of  species.  But  it  is  not  yet  a  totality  per'  ^ 
fectly  organized  in  itself.  Each  part  of  the  plant  is  the  whole  in- 
dividual, each  twig  is  the  whole  tree.  The  parts  are  related  in- 
differently to  each  other ;  the  crown  can  become  a  root,  and  the  root 
a  crown.  The  plant,  therefore,  does  not  yet  attain  a  true  being 
in  se  of  individuality ;  for,  in  order  that  this  may  be  attained,  an 
absolute  unity  of  the  individual  is  necessary.  This  unity,  which 
constitutes  an  individual  and  concrete  subjectivity,  is  first  seen  in 
(8.)  The  animal  organism,  the  animal  kingdom.  An  unin- 
terrupted intus-susception,  free  motion  and  sensation,  are  first 
found  in  the  animal  organism.  In  its  higher  forms  we  find  an 
inner  warmth  and  a  voice.  In  its  highest  form,  man,  nature,  or 
rather  the  spirit,  which  works  through  nature,  apprehends  itself 
as  conscious  individuality,  as  Ego.  The  spirit  thus  become  a  free 
and  rational  self,  has  now  completed  its  self-emancipation  from 
nature. 

III.  Philosophy  of  Mind. — 1.  The  Subjective  Mind. — 
The  mind  \s>  the  truth  of  nature ;  it  is  being  removed  from  its 
estrangement,  and  become  identical  with  itself.  Its  formal  es- 
sence, therefore,  is  freedom,  the  possibility  of  abstracting  itself 
from  every  thing  else ;  its  material  essence  is  the  capacity  of 
manifesting  itself  as  mind,  as  a  conscious  rationality, — of  positing 
the  intellectual  universe  as  its  kingdom,  and  of  building  a  struc- 
ture of  objective  rationality.  In  order,  however,  to  know  itself, 
and  every  thing  rational, — in  order  to  posit  nature  more  and  more 
negatively,  the  mind,  like  nature,  must  pass  through  a  series  of 
stages  or  emancipative  acts.  As  it  comes  from  nature  and  rises 
from  its  externality  to  being,  per  se,  it  is  at  first  soul  or  spirit  of 
nature,  and  as  such,  it  is  an  object  of  anthropology  in  a  strict 
sense.  As  this  spirit  of  nature,  it  sympathizes  with  the  general 
planetary  life  of  the  earth,  and  is  in  this  respect  subject  to  diver- 
sity of  climate,  and  change  of  seasons  and  days ;  it  sympathizes 
with  the  geographical  portion  of  the  world  which  it  occupies,  i.  e., 
it  is  related  to  a  diversity  of  race ;  still  farther,  it  bears  a  na- 
tional type,  and  is  moreover  determined  by  mode  of  life,  forma- 
tion of  the  body,  &c.,  while  these  natural  conditions  work  also 


HEGEL. 


357 


upon  its  intelligent  and  moral  character.  Lastly,  we  must  here 
take  notice  of  the  way  in  which  nature  has  determined  the  indi- 
vidual subject,  i.  e.  his  natural  temperament,  character,  idiosyn- 
crasy, &c.  To  this  belong  the  natural  changes  of  life,  age,  sex- 
ual relation,  sleep,  aod  waking.  In  all  this  the  mind  is  still 
buried  in  nature,  and  this  middle  condition  between  being  ^er  se 
and  the  sleep  of  nature,  is  sensation,  the  hollow  forming  of  the 
mind  in  its  unconscious  and  unenlightened  (verstandlos)  individ- 
uality. A  higher  stage  of  sensation  is  feeling,  i.  e.  sensation  in  se, 
where  being  per  se  appears  ;  feeling  in  its  completed  form  is  self- 
feeling.  Since  the  subject,  in  self-feeling,  is  buried  in  the  pecu- 
liarity of  his  sensations,  but  at  the  same  time  concludes  himself 
with  himself,  as  a  subjective  one,  the  self-feeling  is  seen  to  be  the 
preliminary  step  to  consciousness.  The  Ego  now  appears  as  the 
shaft  in  which  all  these  sensations,  representations,  cognitions  and 
thoughts  are  preserved,  which  is  with  them  all,  and  constitutes 
the  centre  in  which  they  all  come  together.  The  mind  as  con- 
scious, as  a  conscious  being  per  se,  as  Ego,  is  the  object  of  the 
phenomenology  of  consciousness. 

The  mind  was  individual,  so  long  as  it  was  interwoven  with 
nature ;  it  is  consciousness  or  Ego  when  it  has  divested  itself  of 
nature.  When  distinguishing  itself  from  nature,  the  mind  with- 
draws itself  into  itself,  and  that  with  which  it  was  formerly  inter- 
woven, and  which  gave  it  a  peculiar  (earthly,  national,  &c.)  de- 
termination, stands  now  distinct  from  it,  as  its  external  world 
(earth,  people,  &c).  The  awaking  of  the  Ego  is  thus  the  act  by 
which  the  objective  world,  as  such,  is  created  ;  while  on  the  other 
hand,  the  Ego  awakens  to  a  conscious  subjectivity  only  in  the  ob- 
jective world,  and  in  distinction  from  it.  The  Ego,  over  against 
the  objective  world,  is  consciousness  in  the  strict  sense  of  the 
word.  Consciousness  becomes  self-consciousness  by  passing 
through  the  stages  of  immediate  sensuous  consciousness,  percep- 
tion, and  understanding,  and  convincing  itself  in  this  its  formative 
history,  that  it  has  only  to  do  with  itself,  while  it  believed  that  it 
had  to  do  with  something  objective.  Again,  self-consciousness 
becomes  universal  or  rational  self-consciousness,  as  follows :  In 


368 


A  mSTORY  OP  PHILOSOPHY. 


its  strivings  to  stamp  the  impress  of  the  Ego  upon  the  objective^ 
and  thus  make  the  objective  subjective,  it  falls  in  conflict  with 
other  self-consciousnesses,  and  begins  a  war  of  extermination 
against  them,  but  rises  from  this  helium  omnium  contra  omnes,  as 
common  consciousness,  as  the  finding  of  the  proper  mean  between 
command  and  obedience,  i.  e.  as  truly  universal,  i.  e.  rational  self 
consciousness.  The  rational  self-consciousness  is  actually  free 
because,  when  related  to  another,  it  is  really  related  to  itself,  and 
in  all  is  still  with  itself ;  it  has  emancipated  itself  from  nature. 
We  have  now  mind  as  mind,  divested  of  its  naturalness  and  sub- 
jectivity, and  as  such,  it  is  an  object  of  Pneumatology. 

Mind  is  at  first  theoretical  mind,  or  intelligence,  and  then 
practical  mind,  or  will.  It  is  theoretical  in  that  it  has  to  do  with 
the  rational  as  something  given,  and  now  posits  it  as  its  own ;  it 
is  practical  in  that  it  immediately  wills  the  subjective  content 
(truth),  which  it  has  as  its  own,  to  be  freed  from  its  one-sided 
subjective  form,  and  transformed  into  an  objective.  The  practi- 
cal mind  is,  so  far,  the  truth  of  the  theoretical.  The  theoretical 
mind,  in  its  way  to  the  practical,  passes  through  the  stages  of  in- 
tuition, representation,  and  thought ;  and  the  will  on  its  side 
forms  itself  into  a  free  will  through  impulse,  desire,  and  inclina- 
tion. The  free  will,  as  having  a  being  in  space  {Daseyn),  is  the 
objective  mind,  right,  and  the  state.  In  right,  morals  and  the 
state,  the  freedom  and  rationality,  which  are  chosen  by  the  will, 
take  on  an  objective  form.  Every  natural  determination  and  im- 
pulse now  becomes  moralized,  and  comes  up  to  view  again  as  ethi- 
cal institute,  as  right  and  duty  (the  sexual  impulse  now  appears 
as  marriage,  and  the  impulse  of  revenge  as  civil  punishment,  &c.) 

2.  The  Objective  Mind. — (1.)  The  immediate  objective  being 
(Daseyn)  of  the  free  will  is  the  right.  The  individual,  so  far  as 
he  is  capable  of  rights,  so  far  as  he  has  rights  and  exercises  them, 
is  a  person.  The  maxim  of  right  is,  therefore,  be  a  person  and 
have  respect  to  other  persons.  The  person  allows  himself  an  ex- 
ternal sphere  for  his  freedom,  a  substratum  in  which  he  can  exer- 
cise his  will :  as  property,  possession.  As  person  I  have  the  right 
of  possession,  the  absolute  right  of  appropriation,  the  right  to  cast 


HEGEL. 


359 


my  will  over  every  thing,  which  thereby  becomes  mine.  But 
there  exist  other  persons  besides  myself.  My  right  is,  therefore, 
limited  through  the  right  of  others.  There  thus  arises  a  conflict 
between  will  and  will,  which  is  settled  in  a  compact,  in  a  common 
will.  The  relation  of  compact  is  the  first  step  towards  the  state, 
but  only  the  ^^rs^  step,  for  if  we  should  define  the  state  as  a  com- 
pact of  all  with  all,  this  would  sink  it  in  the  category  of  private 
rights  and  private  property.  It  does  not  depend  upon  the  will 
of  the  individual  whether  he  will  live  in  the  state  or  not.  The 
relation  of  compact  refers  to  private  property.  In  a  compact, 
therefore,  two  wills  merge  themselves  in  a  common  will,  which  as 
such  becomes  a  right.  But  just  here  lies  also  the  possibility  of  a 
conflict  between  the  individual  will  and  the  right  or  the  universal 
will.  The  separation  of  the  two  is  a  wrong  (civil  wrong,  fraud, 
crime).  This  separation  demands  a  reconciliation,  a  restoration 
of  the  right  or  the  universal  will  from  its  momentary  suppression 
or  negation  by  the  particular  will.  The  right  restoring  itself  in 
respect  of  the  particular  will,  and  establishing  a  negation  of  the 
wrong,  is  punishment.  Those  theories,  which  found  the  right  of 
punishment  in  some  end  of  warning  or  improvement,  mistake  the 
essence  of  punishment.  Threatening,  warning,  &c.,  are  finite 
ends,  i.  e.  means,  and  moreover  uncertain  means  :  but  an  act  of 
righteousness  should  not  be  made  a  means ;  righteousness  is  not 
exercised  in  order  that  any  thing  other  than  itself  shall  be  gained. 
The  fulfilment  and  self-manifestation  of  righteousness  is  absolute 
end,  self-end.  The  particular  views  we  have  mentioned,  can  only 
be  considered  in  reference  to  the  mode  of  punishment.  The  pun- 
ishment which  is  inflicted  on  a  criminal,  is  his  right,  his  ration- 
ality, his  law,  beneath  which  he  should  be  subsumed.  His  act 
comes  back  upon  himself.  Hegel  also  defends  capital  punishment 
whose  abolition  seemed  to  him  as  an  untimely  sentimentalism. 

(2.)  The  removal  of  the  opposition  of  the  universal  and  par- 
ticular will  in  the  subject  constitutes  morality.  In  morality  the 
freedom  of  the  will  is  carried  forward  to  a  self-determination  of 
the  subjectivity,  and  the  abstract  right  becomes  duty  and  virtue. 
The  moral  standpoint  is  the  standpoint  of  conscience,  it  is  the 


360 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


right  of  the  subjective  will,  the  right  of  a  free  ethical  decision. 
In  the  consideration  of  strict  right,  it  is  no  inquiry  what  my  prin- 
ciple or  my  view  might  be,  but  in  morality  the  question  is  at  once 
directed  towards  the  purpose  and  moving  spring  of  the  will. 
Hegel  calls  this  standpoint  of  moral  reflection  and  dutiful  action 
for  a  reason — morality,  in  distinction  from  a  substantial,  uncondi- 
tioned and  unreflecting  ethics.  This  standpoint  has  three  ele- 
ments; (1)  the  element  of  resolution  {vorsatz),  where  we  consider 
the  inner  determination  of  the  acting  subject,  that  which  allows 
an  act  to  be  ascribed  only  to  me,  and  the  blame  of  it  to  rest  only 
on  my  will  (imputation) ;  (2)  the  element  of  purpose,  where  the 
completed  act  is  regarded  not  according  to  its  consequences,  but 
according  to  its  relative  worth  in  reference  to  myself.  The  reso- 
lution was  still  internal ;  but  now  the  act  is  completed,  and  I  must 
suffer  myself  to  judge  according  to  the  constituents  of  the  act,  be- 
cause I  must  have  known  the  circumstances  under  which  I  acted ; 
(8)  the  element  of  the  good,  where  the  act  is  judged  according  to 
its  universal  worth.  The  good  is  peculiarly  the  reconciliation  of 
the  particular  subjective  will  with  the  universal  will,  or  with  the 
conception  of  the  will ;  in  other  words,  to  will  the  rational  is  good. 
Opposed  to  this  is  evil,  or  the  elevation  of  the  subjective  will 
against  the  universal,  the  attempt  to  set  up  the  peculiar  and  indi- 
vidual choice  as  absolute ;  in  other  words,  to  will  the  irrational  is 
evil. 

(3.)  In  morality  we  had  conscience  and  the  abstract  good  (the 
good  which  ought  to  be)  standing  over  against  each  other.  The 
concrete  identity  of  the  two,  the  union  of  subjective  and  objective 
good,  is  ethics.  In  the  ethical  the  good  has  become  actualized  in 
an  existing  world,  and  a  nature  of  self-consciousness. 

The  ethical  mind  is  seen  at  first  immediately,  or  in  a  natural 
form,  as  marriage  and  the  family.  Three  elements  meet  together 
in  marriage,  which  should  not  be  separated,  and  which  are  so  often 
and  so  wrongly  isolated.  Marriage  is  (1)  a  sexual  relation,  and  is 
founded  upon  a  difference  of  sex ;  it  is,  therefore,  something  other 
than  Platonic  love  or  monkish  asceticism ;  (2)  it  is  a  civil  con- 
tract ;  (3)  it  is  love.    Yet  Hegel  lays  no  great  stress  upon  this 


HEGEL. 


361 


subjective  element  in  concluding  upon  marriage,  for  a  reciprocal 
affection  will  spring  up  in  tlie  married  life.  It  is  more  ethical 
when  a  determination  to  marry  is  first,  and  a  definite  personal 
affection  follows  afterwards,  for  marriage  is  most  prominently  duty 
Hegel  would,  therefore,  place  the  greatest  obstacles  in  the  way  of 
a  dissolution  of  marriage.  He  has  also  developed  and  described 
in  other  respects  the  family  state  with  a  profound  ethical  feeling. 

Since  the  family  becomes  separated  into  a  multitude  of  fami- 
lies, it  is  a  civil  society,  in  which  the  members,  though  still  inde- 
pendent individuals,  are  bound  in  unity  by  their  wants,  by  the 
constitution  of  rights  as  a  means  of  security  for  person  and  pro- 
perty, and  by  an  outward  administrative  arrangement.  Hegel 
distinguished  the  civil  society  from  the  state  in  opposition  to  most 
modern  theorists  upon  the  subject,  who,  regarding  it  as  the  great 
end  of  the  state  to  give  security  of  property  and  of  personal  free- 
dom, reduced'  the  state  to  a  civil  society.  But  on  such  a  stand- 
point which  would  make  the  state  wholly  of  wants  and  of  rights, 
it  is  impossible,  e.  g.  to  conceive  of  war.  On  the  ground  of  civil 
society  each  one  stands  for  himself,  is  independent,  and  makes 
himself  as  end,  while  every  thing  else  is  a  means  for  him.  But 
the  state,  on  the  contrary,  knows  no  independent  individuals,  each 
one  of  whom  may  regard  and  pursue  only  his  own  well-being ; 
but  in  the  state,  the  whole  is  the  end,  and  the  individual  is  the 
means. — For  the  administration  of  justice,  Hegel,  in  opposition  to 
those  of  our  time  who  deny  the  right  of  legislation,  would  have 
written  and  intelligible  laws,  which  should  be  within  reach  of  every 
one ;  still  farther,  justice  should  be  administered  by  a  public  trial 
by  jury. — In  respect  of  the  organization  of  civil  society,  Hegel  ex- 
presses a  great  preference  for  a  corporation.  Sanctity  of  mar- 
riage, he  says,  and  honor  in  corporations,  are  the  two  elements 
around  which  the  disorganization  of  civil  society  ttlTns. 

Civil  society  passes  over  into  the  state  since  the  interest  of  the 
mdividual  loses  itself  in  the  idea  of  an  ethical  whole.  The  state 
ts  the  ethical  idea  actualized,  it  is  the  ethical  mind  as  it  rules  over 
the  action  and  knowledge  of  the  individuals  conceived  in  it. 
Finally  the  states  themselves,  since  they  appear  as  individuals  in 
16 


362 


A  HISTORY  OP  PHILOSOPHr. 


an  attracting  or  repelling  relation  to  each  other;  represent,  in  their 
destiny,  in  their  rise  and  fall,  the  process  of  the  iuorld''s  history. 

In  his  apprehension  of  the  state,  Hegel  approached  very  near 
the  ancient  notion,  which  merged  the  individual  and  the  right  of 
individuality,  wholly  in  the  will  of  the  state.  He  held  fast  to  the 
omnipotence  of  the  state  in  the  ancient  sense.  Hence  his  resist- 
ance to  modern  liberalism,  which  would  allow  individuals  to  pos- 
tulate, to  criticize,  and  to  will  according  to  their  improved  knowl- 
edge. The  state  is  with  Hegel  the  rational  and  ethical  substance 
in  which  the  individual  has  to  live,  it  is  the  existing  reason  to 
which  the  individual  has  to  submit  himself  with  a  free  view.  He 
regarded  a  limited  monarchy  as  the  best  form  of  government,  after 
the  manner  of  the  English  constitution,  to  which  Hegel  was 
especially  inclined,  and  in  reference  to  which  he  uttered  his  well- 
known  saying  that  the  king  was  but  the  dot  upon  the  i.  There 
must  be  an  individual,  Hegel  supposes,  who  can  affirm  for  the 
state,  who  can  prefix  an  "  I  will "  to  the  resolves  of  the  state,  and 
who  can  be  the  head  of  a  formal  decision.  The  personality  of  a 
state,  he  says,  "  is  only  actual  as  a  person,  as  monarch."  Hence 
Hegel  defends  hereditary  monarchy,  but  he  places  the  nobility  by 
its  side  as  a  mediating  element  between  people  and  prince — not 
indeed  to  control  or  limit  the  government,  nor  to  maintain  the 
rights  of  the  people,  but  only  that  the  people  may  experience  that 
there  is  a  good  rule,  that  the  consciousness  of  the  people  may  be 
with  the  government  and  that  the  state  may  enter  into  the  sub- 
jective consciousness  of  the  people. 

States  and  the  minds  of  individual  races  pour  their  currents 
into  the  stream  of  the  world's  history.  The  strife,  the  victory, 
and  the  subjection  of  the  spirits  of  individual  races,  and  the  pass- 
ing over  of  the  world  spirit  from  one  people  to  another,  is  the  con- 
tent of  the  world's  history.  The  development  of  the  world's  his- 
tory is  generally  connected  with  some  ruling  race,  which  carries 
in  itself  the  world  spirit  in  its  present  stage  of  development,  and 
in  distinction  from  which  the  spirits  of  other  races  have  no  rights. 
Thus  these  race-spirits  stand  around  the  throne  of  the  absolute 


HEGEL. 


363 


spirit,  as  the  executors  of  its  actualization,  as  the  witnesses  and 
adornment  of  its  glory. 

3.  The  Absolute  Mind. — (1.)  JEsihetics.  The  absolute  mind 
is  immediately  present  to  the  sensuous  intuition  as  the  beautiful  or  as 
art.  The  beautiful  is  the  appearance  of  the  idea  through  a  sensible 
medium  (a  crystal,  color,  tone,  poetry) ;  it  is  the  idea  actualized 
in  the  form  of  a  limited  phenomenon.  To  the  beautiful  (and  to 
its  subordinate  kinds,  the  simply  beautiful,  the  sublime,  and  the 
comical)  two  factors  always  belong,  thought  and  matter ;  but  both 
these  are  inseparable  from  each  other ;  the  matter  is  the  outer 
phenomenon  of  the  thought,  and  should  express  nothing  but  the 
thought  which  inspires  it  and  shines  through  it.  The  different 
ways  in  which  matter  and  form  are  connected,  furnish  the  differ- 
ent forms  of  art.  In  the  symbolic  form  of  art  the  matter  prepon- 
derates ;  the  thought  presses  through  it,  and  brings  out  the  ideal 
only  with  difficulty.  In  the  classic  form  of  art,  the  ideal  has  at- 
tained its  adequate  existence  in  the  matter ;  content  and  form  are 
absolutely  befitting  each  other.  Lastly,  in  romantic  art,  the  mind 
preponderates,  and  the  matter  is  a  mere  appearance  and  sign 
through  which  the  mind  every  where  breaks  out,  and  struggles  up 
above  the  material.  The  system  of  particular  arts  is  connected 
with  the  different  forms  of  art ;  but  the  distinction  of  one  par- 
ticular art  from  another,  depends  especially  upon  the  difference 
of  the  material. 

(a.)  The  beginning  of  art  is  Architecture.  It  belongs  essen- 
tially to  the  symbolic  form  of  art,  since  in  it  the  sensible  matter 
far  preponderates,  and  it  first  seeks  the  true  conformity  between 
content  and  form.  Its  material  is  stone,  which  it  fashions  ac- 
cording to  the  laws  of  gravity.  Hence  it  has  the  character  of 
magnitude,  of  silent  earnestness,  of  oriental  sublimity. 

(6.)  Sculpture. — The  material  of  this  art  is  also  stone,  but  it 
advances  from  the  inorganic  to  the  organic.  It  gives  the  stone  a 
bodily  form,  and  makes  it  only  a  serving  vehicle  of  the  thought. 
In  sculpture,  the  material,  the  stone,  since  it  represents  the  body, 
that  building  of  the  soul,  in  its  clearness  and  beauty,  disappears 


364 


A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


wholly  in  the  ideal ;  there  is  nothing  left  of  the  material  which 
does  not  serve  the  idea. 

(c.)  Fainting. — This  is  pre-eminently  a  romantic  art.  It 
represents,  as  sculpture  cannot  do,  the  life  of  the  soul,  the  look,  the 
disposition,  the  heart.  Its  medium  is  no  longer  a  coarse  material 
substratum,  hut  the  colored  surface,  and  the  soul-like  play  of 
light ;  it  gives  the  appearance  only  of  complete  spacial  dimen- 
sion. Hence  it  is  able  to  represent  in  a  complete  dramatic 
movement  the  whole  scale  of  feelings,  conditions  of  heart,  and 
actions. 

{d.)  Music. — This  leaves  out  all  relation  of  space.  Its  mate- 
rial is  sound,  the  vibration  of  a  sonorous  body.  It  leaves,  there- 
fore, the  field  of  sensuous  intuition,  and  works  exclusively  upon 
the  sensation.  Its  basis  is  the  breast  of  the  sensitive  soul.  Music 
is  the  most  subjective  art. 

{e.)  Lastly  in  Poetry,  or  the  speaking  art,  is  the  tongue  of  art 
loosed ;  poetry  can  represent  every  thing.  Its  material  is  not  the 
mere  sound,  but  the  sound  as  word,  as  the  sign  of  a  representa- 
tion, as  the  expression  of  reason.  But  this  material  cannot  be 
formed  at  random,  but  only  in  verse  according  to  certain  rhythmi- 
cal and  musical  laws.  In  poetry,  all  other  arts  return  again ;  as 
epic,  representing  in  a  pleasing  and  extended  narrative  the  figura- 
tive history  of  races,  it  corresponds  to  the  plastic  arts ;  as  lyric, 
expressing  some  inner  condition  of  soul,  it  corresponds  to  music ; 
as  dramatic  poetry,  exhibiting  the  struggles  between  characters 
acting  out  of  directly  opposite  interests,  it  is  the  union  of  both 
these  arts. 

(2.)  Philosophy  of  Religion. — Poetry  forms  the  transition 
from  art  to  religion.  In  art  the  idea  was  present  for  the  intui- 
tion, in  religion  it  is  present  for  the  representation.  The  content 
of  every  religion  is  the  reconciliation  of  the  finite  with  the  infi- 
nite, of  the  subject  with  God.  All  religions  seek  a  union  of  the 
divine  and  the  human.    This  was  done  in  the  crudest  form  by 

(a.)  The  natural  religions  of  the  oriental  world.  God  is,  with 
them,  but  a  power  of  nature,  a  substance  of  nature,  in  comparison 
with  which  the  finite  and  the  individual  disappear  as  nothing. 


HEGEL. 


365 


(5.)  A  higher  idea  of  God  is  attained  by  the  religions  of  spir- 
itual individuality,  in  which  the  divine  is  looked  upon  as  subject, — ■ 
as  an  exalted  subjectivity,  full  of  power  and  wisdom  in  Judaism, 
the  religion  of  sublimity ;  as  a  circle  of  plastic  divine  forms  in  the 
Grecian  religion,  the  religion  of  beauty ;  as  an  absolute  end  of 
the  state  in  the  Roman  religion,  the  religion  of  the  understand- 
ing or  of  design. 

(c.)  The  revealed  or  Christian  religion  first  establishes  a  posi- 
tive reconciliation  between  God  and  the  world,  by  beholding  the 
actual  unity  of  the  divine  and  the  human  in  the  person  of  Christ, 
the  God-man,  and  apprehending  God  as  triune,  i.  e.  as  Himself,  as 
incarnate,  and  as  returning  from  this  incarnation  to  Himself.  The 
intellectual  content  of  revealed  religion,  or  of  Christianity,  is  thus 
the  same  as  that  of  speculative  philosophy;  the  only  difference 
being,  that  in  the  one  case  the  content  is  represented  in  the  form 
of  the  representation,  in  the  form  of  a  history ;  while,  in  the  other, 
it  appears  in  the  form  of  the  conception.  Stripped  of  its  form  of 
religious  representation,  we  have  now  the  standpoint  of 

(3.)  The  Absolute  Philosophy,  or  the  thought  knowing  itself 
as  all  truth,  and  reproducing  the  whole  natural  and  intellectual 
universe  from  itself,  having  the  system  of  philosophy  for  its  de- 
velopment— a  closed  circle  of  circles. 


With  Hegel  closes  the  history  of  philosophy.  The  philosophi- 
cal developments  which  have  succeeded  him,  and  which  are  part- 
ly a  carrying  out  of  his  system,  and  partly  the  attempt  to  lay  a 
new  basis  for  philosophy,  belong  to  the  present,  and  not  yet  to 
history. 


THE  END. 


D.  APPLET  ON  &  CO:S  PUBLICATIONS. 


ENGLISH  LANGUAGE 
Hand-Book  of  tlie  English  Language. 

By  G.  R.  Latham,  M.D.,  F.R.S.    12mo,  398  pages. 

The  ethnological  relations  of  the  English  Language,  its  history  and  ana- 
lysis, its  spelUng  and  pronunciation,  etymology  and  syntax,  are  here  treated 
with  a  completeness,  learning,  and  grasp  of  intellect,  that  will  be  vainly 
sought  elsewhere.  The  elements  of  our  tongue,  the  successive  changes  by 
which  it  has  been  modified,  the  origin  of  its  pecuUar  expressions,  and  other 
subjects  of  like  importance  and  interest,  receive  due  attention  of  the  author, 
who  ranks  among  the  most  accomplished  scholars  of  England.  Whether  for 
private  study,  or  as  a  manual  for  college  and  high-school  classes.  Dr.  Latham's 
Hand-Book  will  be  found  one  of  the  most  useful  works  extant  in  the  depart- 
ment of  belles-lettres. 

Graham^s  English  Synonymes, 

Classified  and  explained ;  with  practical  exercises,  designed  for  schools 
and  private  tuition ;  with  an  introduction  and  illustrative  authorities. 
By  Henry  Reed,  LL.D.    12mo,  344  pages. 

This  treatise  is  intended  to  teach  the  right  use  of  words.  It  explains  the 
principal  synonymes  of  the  language,  classified  and  arranged  in  pairs,  and 
illustrates  their  use  at  different  eras  with  passages  from  Shakespeare,  Milton, 
and  Wordsworth.  Exercises  are  appended,  which  require  the  pupil  to  fill 
blanks  by  the  insertion  of  the  words  compared,  selecting  in  each  case  the 
one  that  is  adapted  to  the  context.  Thus  practically  impressed  on  the  pupil's 
mind,  their  distinctive  meanings  will  not  soon  be  forgotten. 

The  attention  of  teachers  is  particularly  invited  to  this  v/ork,  as  one  of 
the  most  useful  that  can  be  found  for  imparting  a  thorough  acquaintance  with 
our  tongue.  Besides  teaching  the  student  how  to  avoid  common  inaccu- 
racies of  expression,  and  training  him  to  that  precision  which  is  essential  to 
a  good  style,  it  wiU  be  found  highly  -serviceable  in  disciplining  his  mind  by 
accustommg  it  to  a  critical  appreciation  of  nice  distmctions.  Wherever  it 
has  been  introduced  into  academic  or  coUegiate  institutions,  it  has  awakened 
great  interest  in  the  study  of  words,  and  proved  a  valuable  auxiUary  te 
■  curses  of  grammar  and  rhetoric. 


B.  APPLETON  c£-  CO:S  PUBLICATIONS. 


History  of  English  Literature. 

By  WILLIAM  SPALDING,  A.M.,  Professor  of  Logic,  Rhetoric,  and 
Metaphysics,  in  the  University  of  St.  Andrews.  12mo,  413 
pages. 

The  above  work  is  ofifered  as  a  Text-book  for  the  use  of  advanced  Schools 
and  Academies.  It  traces  the  literary  progress  of  the  nation  from  Anglo- 
Saxon  times  to  the  present  day,  and  furnishes  a  comprehensive  outline  of 
the  origin  and  growth  of  our  language.  Those  literary  monuments  of  early 
date  which  are  thought  most  worthy  of  attention,  are  described  with  con- 
siderable fulness  and  in  an  attractive  manner.  Constant  effort  is  made  to 
arouse  reflection,  both  by  occasional  remarks  on  the  relations  between  in- 
tellectual culture  and  the  world  of  reality  and  action,  and  by  hints  as  to  the 
laws  on  which  criticism  is  founded.  The  characteristics  of  the  most  cele- 
brated modern  works  are  analyzed  at  length. 

The  style  of  the  author  is  remarkably  clear  and  interesting,  compelling 
the  reader  to  linger  over  his  pages  with  unwearied  attention. 

Manual  of  Grecian  and  Roman  Antiquities. 

By  Dr.  E.  F.  BOJESEN,  with  Notes  and  Questions  by  Rev.  THOMAS 
K.  ARNOLD.    12mo,  209  pages. 

The  present  Manuals  of  Greek  and  Roman  Antiquities  are  far  superior 
to  any  thing  on  the  same  topics  as  yet  offered  to  the  American  public.  A 
leading  Review  of  Germany  says  of  the  Roman  Manual : — "  Small  as  the 
compass  of  it  is,  we  may  confidently  affirm  that  it  is  a  great  improvement 
on  all  preceding  works  of  the  kind.  We  no  longer  meet  with  the  wretched 
old  method,  in  which  subjects  essentially  distinct  are  herded  together,  and 
connected  subjects  disconnected,  but  have  a  simple,  systematic  arrangement, 
by  which  the  reader  readily  receives  a  clear  representation  of  Roman  life. 
We  no  longer  stumble  against  countless  errors  in  detail,  which,  though  long 
ago  assailed  and  extirpated  by  Niebuhr  and  others,  have  found  their  last 
place  of  refuge  in  our  manuals.  The  recent  investigations  of  philologists 
and  jurists  have  been  extensively,  but  carefully  and  circumspectly  used." 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO:S  PUBLICATIONS. 


Elements  of  Logic. 

With  an  Introductory  view  of  Philosophy  in  general,  and  a  Preliminary 
View  of  the  Reason.    By  Henry  W.  Tappan.    12mo,  467  pages. 

Not  considering  Logic  as  an  abstraction,  Prof.  Tappan  assigns  it  its 
proper  place  among  kindred  sciences,  and  takes  the  student  over  the  whole 
field  of  Philosophy,  that  the  connection  of  its  various  parts  may  be  distinctly 
perceived.  He  presents  the  subject,  not  merely  as  a  method  of  obtaining 
inferences  from  truths,  but  also  as  a  method  of  estabhshing  those  first  truths 
and  general  principles  that  must  precede  all  deduction.  The  great  starting- 
points  of  theory,  the  sources  to  which  we  must  look  for  premises  in  every 
department  of  science,  are  viewed  in  connection  \dih.  Logic ;  the  relations 
between  the  two  are  examined ;  and  the  proper  understanding  of  both  is 
thus  greatly  facilitated.  This  is  new  ground ;  yet  it  is  what  the  profound 
thinker  and  all  who  would  master  the  subject  have  long  needed. 

In  carrying  out  this  plan,  the  author  begins  with  Philosophy  in  general ; 
shows  the  distinction  between  the  Phenomenal  and  the  Metaphenomenal, 
the  Objective  and  the  Subjective,  the  Sensual  and  the  Transcendental ;  defines 
Ideas  and  the  laws  of  their  development ;  and  then  proceeds  to  treat  of  the 
divisions  of  General  Philosophy,  Metaphysics,  and  homology — ia  the  latter 
of  which,  with  Ethics,  ^Esthetics,  and  Somatology,  Logic  is  included. 

The  interesting  questions  incidentally  opened  up,  such  as  the  Criteria  of 
a  True  Philosophy,  receive  attention,  and  then,  after  a  brief  preliminary 
view  of  the  Reason  and  its  functions,  we  are  introduced  to  Logic  Proper. 
The  evolution  of  Ideas,  in  all  their  variety,  is  first  set  set  forth  at  length ; 
and  numerous  important  points,  now  for  the  first  time  found  in  a  system  of 
Logic,  such  as  the  relation  between  matter  and  spirit,  right  and  wrong,  free- 
dom and  responsibihty,  are  discussed  in  a  manner  which  proves  the  author 
a  practical  adept  in  the  science  he  would  teach.  Inductive  and  Deductive 
Logic  follow;  the  latter  of  which  embraces  all  the  rules,  principles,  and 
formulte  to  be  found  in  the  text-books  of  former  dialecticians,  and  to  v/hich, 
for  the  most  part,  they  confine  themselves. 

The  work  closes  with  a  masterly  dissertation  on  the  nature  of  proof,  its 
different  kinds,  degrees  of  evidence,  circumstantial  evidence,  reasoning  from 
experience  and  analogy,  and  the  calculation  of  chances.  Important  as  these 
subjects  are,  and  intimately  as  they  are  connected  with  the  work  of  the 
dialectician,  they  have  heretofore  had  no  place  in  treatises  on  Logic ;  Mr. 
Tappen  is  the  first  to  unfold  their  connection  with  this  science,  and  the 
clearness  and  comprehensiveness  with  which  he  has  treated  them  leave 
nothing  to  be  desired. 


D.  APPLET  ON  &  CO:S  PUBLICATIONS. 


An  Elementary  Treatise  on  Logic : 

Including,  Part  I.  Analysis  of  Formulge ;  Part  II.  Method.  With  an 
Appendix  of  Examples  for  Analysis  and  Criticism,  and  a  copious 
Index  of  Terms  and  Subjects.  By  W.  D.  Wilson,  D.D.,  Trinity  Pro- 
fessor of  Christian  Ethics  and  Logic  in  Hobart  Free  College.  12mo, 
425  pages. 

The  peculiar  merits  of  Dr.  Wilson's  Elementary  Treatise  on  Logic  can 
become  known  only  by  a  thorough  examination  of  the  book  itself,  or  daily 
use  in  the  class-room.  But  a  few  of  its  distinguishing  features  can  be  here 
enumerated.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  eminently  clear  in  its  arrangement, 
language,  and  illustrations.  Its  definitions  are  terse  and  precise ;  its  advance 
from  step  to  step  is  natural  and  gradual ;  every  technicahty  is  thoroughly 
explained,  and  every  difficulty  removed.  Secondly,  it  covers  the  whole 
ground,  leaving  nothing  unsaid,  nothing  unexplained,  nothing  for  the  scholar 
to  ask,  nothing  for  the  teacher  to  supply  from  other  sources.  Again,  it  is 
claimed  that  in  this  work  many  errors  inherent  in  the  old  systems,  and  per- 
petuated by  writer  after  writer,  from  Aristotle  down,  have  been  corrected, 
and  that  important  new  ground  has  been  covered. 

The  subject  of  Method^  by  some  omitted  altogether,  receives  special 
attention  at  the  hands  of  the  author ;  who,  to  all  that  is  valuable  in  the 
works  of  others,  has  added  the  results  of  his  own  careful  study.  If  the  for- 
mulae of  Logic  are  worth  any  thing,  of  course  the  method  of  their  application 
is  important ;  in  fact,  on  this  method  depends  much  of  their  value.  In  the 
application  of  his  rules  and  precepts,  Dr.  Wilson  is  peculiarly  happy.  He 
never  allows  the  pupil  to  lose  sight  of  the  practical  phase  of  the  questions 
he  successively  treats. 

The  First  Part  of  the  Elementary  Treatise  relates  to  the  Analysis  of 
Formulae.  A  new  and  superior  classification  of  syllogisms  has  been  adopted, 
and  the  different  classes  are  defined  and  illustrated  in  such  a  way  as  to  in- 
sure their  prompt  recognition.  The  Second  Part  of  the  work,  in  which  the 
original  labors  of  the  author  are  everywhere  apparent,  considers  in  turn  the 
Methods  of  Investigation,  of  Proof  and  Refutation,  of  Instruction  and  Criti- 
cism. An  Appendix  furnishes  copious  examples  for  the  exercise  of  the 
student. 

The  publishers  are  convinced  that  the  clearness,  completeness,  and  prac- 
tical character  of  this  work  wiU  greatly  facilitate  the  study  of  Logic  in 
schools  and  colleges.  They  invite  the  severest  test  of  the  claims  here  made 
in  its  behalf. 


L.  APPLETON  &  C0:8  PUBLICATIONS. 


Elements  of  Moral  Philosopliy  : 

Analytical,  Synthetical,  and  Practical.    By  Hubbard  "Winslow.  12mo, 
480  pages. 

This  work  is  an  original  and  thorough  examination  of  the  fundamental 
laws  of  Moral  Science,  and  of  their  relations  to  Christianity  and  to  practical 
life.  It  has  already  taken  a  firm  stand  among  our  highest  works  of  literatmre 
and  science.  From  the  numerous  commendations  of  it  by  our  most  learned 
and  competent  men,  we  have  room  for  only  the  following  brief  extracts : 

From  Eev.  TnosiAS  H.  Sktnnee,  D.D.,  of  the  Union  Theol.  Soc,  Y. 
"It  is  a  work  of  tmcommon  merit,  on  a  subject  very  difficult  to  be  treated  well. 
His  analysis  is  complete.   He  has  sbunned  no  question  whicli  his  purpose  required  him 
to  answer,  and  he  has  met  no  adversary  which  he  has  not  overcome." 

From  Kev.  L.  P.  Hickok,  Vice-President  of  Union  College. 
"  I  deem  the  book  well  adapted  to  the  ends  proposed  in  the  preface.   The  style  is 
cle^,  the  thoughts  perspicuous.   I  think  it  calculated  to  do  good,  to  promote  tho 
truth,  to  diffuse  light,  and  impart  instruction  to  the  community,  in  a  department  of 
study  of  the  deepest  interest  to  mankind." 

From  Eev.  James  "Walker,  D.D.,  President  of  Harvard  University, 
"  Having  carefully  examined  the  more  critical  parts,  to  which  my  attention  has  been 
especially  directed,  I  am  free  to  express  my  conviction  of  the  great  clearness,  discrimi- 
nation, and  accuracy  of  the  work,  and  of  its  admirable  adaptation  to  its  object." 

From  Eev.  E  ay  Palmee,  D.D.,  of  Albany. 
"  I  have  examined  this  work  with  great  pleasure,  and  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  in 
my  judgment  it  is  greatly  superior  to  any  treatise  I  have  seen,  in  all  the  essential 
requisites  of  a  good  text-book." 

From  Peof.  Eosseatt  D.  HrrcHCOCK,  D.D.,  of  the  Union  Theol.  Soc,  N.  Y. 
"  The  task  of  mediating  between  science  and  the  popular  mind,  is  one  that  requires 
a  peculiar  gift  of  perspicuity,  both  in  thought  and  style ;  and  this,  I  think,  the  author 
possesses  in  an  eminent  degree.  I  am  pleased  with  its  comprehensiveness,  its  plainness, 
and  its  fidelity  to  the  Chi-istian  stand-point." 

From  Peof.  Henet  B.  Smith,  D.D,,  of  the  Union  Theol.  Soc,  N.  Y. 
"  It  commends  itself  by  its  clear  arrangement  of  the  topics,  its  perspicuity  of  lan- 
guage, and  its  constant  practical  bearings.  I  am  particularly  pleased  with  its  views  of 
conscience.  Its  frequent  and  pertinent  illustrations,  and  the  Scriptural  character  of  its 
explanations  of  the  particular  duties,  will  make  the  work  both  attractive  and  valuable 
as  a  text-book,  in  imparting  instruction  upon  this  vital  part  of  philosophy." 

From  "W.  D.  'Wixson,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Intellectual  and  Moral  Philosophy  in 
Hob  art  Free  College. 

"  I  have  examined  the  work  with  care,  and  have  adopted  it  as  a  text-book  in  the 
study  of  Moral  Science.  I  consider  it  not  only  sound  in  doctrine,  but  clear  and  system- 
atic in  method,  and  withal  pervaded  with  a  prevailing  healthy  tone  of  sentiment, 
which  cannot  fail  to  leave  behind,  in  addition  to  the  truths  it  inculcates,  aa  impression 
in  favor  of  those  truths.  I  esteem  this  one  of  the  greatest  merits  of  the  book.  In  this 
respect  it  has  no  equal,  so  far  as  I  know ;  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  speak  of  it  as  being 
preferable  to  any  other  work  yet  published,  for  use  in  all  institutions  where  Moral 
Philosophy  forms  a  department  in  the  course  of  instruction." 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO:S  PUBLICATIONS. 


A  History  of  Philosophy : 

An  Epitome.    By  Dr.  Albert  Schtvtegler.    Translated  from  the  c  rigi- 
nal  German,  by  Julius  H.  Seelte,    12mo,  365  pages. 

This  translation  is  designed  to  supply  a  want  long  felt  by  both  teachers 
and  students  in  our  American  colleges.  We  have  valuable  histories  of 
Philosophy  in  English,  but  no  manual  on  this  subject  so  clear,  concise,  and 
comprehensive  as  the  one  now  presented.  Schwegler's  work  bears  the 
marks  of  great  learning,  and  is  evidently  written  by  one  who  has  not  only 
studied  the  original  sources  for  such  a  history,  but  has  thought  out  for  him. 
self  the  systems  of  which  he  treats.  He  has  thus  seized  upon  the  real  germ 
of  each  system,  and  traced  its  process  of  development  with  great  clearness 
and  accuracy.  The  whole  history  of  speculation,  from  Thales  to  the  present 
time,  is  presented  in  its  consecutive  order.  This  rich  and  important  field 
of  study,  hitherto  so  greatly  neglected,  will,  it  is  hoped,  receive  a  new  im- 
pulse among  American  students  through  Mr.  Seelye's  translation.  It  is  a 
Dook,  moreover,  invaluable  for  reference,  and  should  be  in  the  possession 
of  every  pubUc  and  private  library. 

From  L.  P.  Hickok,  Vice-President  of  Union  College. 
"  I  have  had  opportunity  to  hear  a  large  part  of  Mr.  Seelye's  translation  of  Schweg- 
ler's History  of  Philosophy  read  from  manuscript,  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  it 
is  a  faithful,  clear,  and  remarkably  precise  English  rendering  of  this  invaluable  Epitome 
of  the  History  of  Philosophy.  It  is  exceedingly  desirable  that  it  should  be  given  to 
American  students  of  philosophy  in  the  English  language,  and  I  have  no  expectation 
of  its  more  favorable  and  successful  accomplishment  than  in  this  present  attempt.  I 
should  immediately  introduce  it  as  a  text-book  in  the  graduate's  department  under  my 
own  instruction,  if  it  be  favorably  published,  and  cannot  doubt  that  other  teachers  will 
rejoice  to  avail  themselves  of  the  like  assistance  from  it." 

From  Hekky  B.  Smith,  Professor  of  Christian  Theology,  Union  Theological 
Seminary,  JSf.  T. 

"It  will  well  reward  diligent  study,  and  is  one  of  the  best  works  for  a  text -book  in 
our  colleges  upon  this  neglected  branch  of  scientific  investigation." 

From  N.  Poetee,  Professor  of  Intellectual  Philosophy  in  Yale  College. 
"  It  is  the  only  book  translated  from  the  German  which  professes  to  give  an  account 
of  the  recent  German  systems  which  seems  adap'ied  to  give  any  intelligible  informa- 
tion on  the  subject  to  a  novice." 

From  Geo.  P.  Fishee,  Professor  of  Divinity  in  Yale  College. 
"  It  is  really  the  best  Epitome  of  the  History  of  Philosophy  now  accessible  to  the 
English  stndent." 

From  Joseph  Havek,  Professor  of  Mental  Philosophy  in  Amherst  College. 
"As  a  manual  and  brief  summary  of  the  whole  range  of  speculative  inquiry,  I  know 
of  no  work  which  stikes  me  more  favorably." 


D.  APPLET  ON  &  CO:S  PUBLICATIONS. 


Lectures  on  the  True,  tlie  Beautiful,  and 
the  Good. 

By  M.  VICTOR  COUSIX.    Translated  by  0.  W.  WIGHT.    1  vol.,  8vo, 
391  pages. 

Cousin  is  confessedly  the  soundest  of  modern  philosophers.  The  founder 
and  head  of  the  Eclectic  School,  his  teachings  by  the  intrinsic  force  of  truth 
have,  with  all  earnest  thinkers,  superseded  the  insufficient  systems  that  pro- 
ceded  it.  The  theory  on  which  they  are  based  may  justly  be  called  a  high- 
toned  spu-itualism,  whose  tendency  is  to  subordinate  the  sensual  and  to 
ennoble  mankind.  It  teaches  the  spirituahty  of  the  soul,  the  freedom  and 
responsibility  of  human  action,  the  dignity  of  justice,  and  the  beauty  of 
charity.  It  sustains  rehgious  sentiment,  seconds  art,  supports  the  right, 
and  purifies  society. 

Such  is  the  general  character  of  Cousin's  philosophy.  In  these  Lectures, 
the  latest  production  of  his  great  mind,  it  is  presented  in  a  condensed, 
striking,  and  attractive  form.  After  taking  a  brief  view  of  the  philosophy 
of  the  nineteenth  centuiy,  and  the  relation  which  his  theory  sustains  to  other 
systems,  the  author  enters  at  once  upon  his  subject.  Under  the  head  of 
"the  True,"  he  considers  the  existence,  origin,  and  value  of  Universal  and 
Necessary  Principles ;  God,  the  principle  of  principles ;  and  mysticism  of 
sentiment  and  philosophy.  Under  "the  Beautiful,"  he  treats  of  Beauty  in 
nature  and  art,  and  adds  a  valuable  chapter  on  French  art  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  Under  the  head  of  "the  Good,"  he  surveys  the  whole  field  of 
Ethics,  reviews  the  theory  of  Expediency  and  other  defective  systems,  and 
finally  brings  us  to  Deity  as  the  grand  embodiment  of  aU  that  is  good  in  the 
universe.  No  one  can  master  the  system  of  Ethics  here  set  forth  by  Cousin, 
without  feeling  that  it  has  made  him  wiser,  nobler,  and  better. 

History  of  Modern  Philosophy. 

By  M.  VICTOR  COUSIN.  Translated  by  0.  W.  WIGHT.  2  vols., 
8vo,  801  pages. 


Philosophy  of  Sir  William  Hamilton. 

Edited  by  0.  W.  WIGHT.    8vo,  530  pages. 


D.  APPLETON  c£-  C0:8  PUBLICATIONIS. 


Course  of  Ancient  Geography  : 

Arranged  with  Special  Reference  to  Convenience  of  Recitation.  By 
Prof.  H.  I.  SCHMIDT,  D.D.,  of  Columbia  CoUege.  12mo,  328 
pages. 

The  object  of  this  work  is  to  facilitate  study.  With  nothing  new  to 
teach  in  the  department  of  Ancient  Geography,  there  is  much  necessity  of 
breaking  up  the  great  masses  of  knowledge  accumulated  on  the  subject  by 
classical  scholars,  and  rendering  the  subject  itself,  its  general  features,  and 
principal  parts,  more  easily  accessible  to  the  student.  Nothing  is  introduced 
into  the  book  but  what  the  student  in  reading  is  constantly  required  to 
know.  The  best  authorities  have  been  consulted,  carefully  compared,  and 
freely  used  throughout.  No  pains  have  been  spared  to  render  the  work  as 
correct  as  our  knowledge  of  the  ancient  world  will  permit.  The  volume 
opens  with  a  short  account  of  the  Geography  known  to  the  ancients  at 
diflPerent  periods,  and  of  the  gradual  extension  of  their  knowledge.  Then 
the  author  begins  with  the  Ancient  Geography  of  Europe — Greece  is  de- 
scribed in  ample  detail,  and  Italy  in  the  same  manner.  Then  follows  all 
that  is  known  of  Asia  Minor.  This  constitutes  what  maj  be  termed  Classi- 
cal Geography — that  portion  of  Ancient  Geography  which  the  student  most 
constantly  needs  in  the  study  of  classical  authors.  To  present  this  properly 
is  the  main  design  of  the  work. 

After  this  the  author  returns  to  Europe — again  to  Asia — and  lastly,  treats 
the  Ancient  Geography  of  Africa.  This  order  seemed  the  most  natural  in  a 
work  of  the  kind,  as  it  is  based  upon  the  relative  importance,  iu  classical 
authors,  of  those  countries  ;  the  author  also  took  upon  this  point  the  advice 
of  a  number  of  distinguished  instructors. 

All  the  matter  presented  is  broken  up  into  short  paragraphs,  and  these 
are  numbered ;  and  questions  which  refer  to  the  facts  given  in  these  para- 
graphs, and  marked  respectively  with  the  corresponding  numbers,  are  given 
in  the  lower  margin.    This  at  once  assists  the  pupil  and  the  teacher. 

In  this  work  every  material  division  of  the  ancient  world  is  noted,  and 
the  name  of  every  sea,  lake,  river,  or  to\vn  is  given ;  in  many  instances,  the 
derivation  and  etymology  of  the  names  are  added.  The  book  is  sufficiently 
fuU  for  every  practical  purpose,  not  only  of  the  school-room,  but  for  refer- 
ence in  general  reading  of  ancient  authors.  It  has  a  copious  Index  that 
much  enhances  its  value  in  this  respect. 

From  the  Becorder. 

"This  very  satisfactory  work  makes  a  valuable  addition  to  the  library  of  the 
classical  student,  and  also  to  the  series  of  test-books  to  be  used  during  the  course  of 
o^adomical  and  collegiate  study," 


D.  APPLETON  &  C0:8  PUBLICATIONS. 


Historical  and  Miscellaneous  Questions. 

From  the  Eighty-Fourth  London  Edition.  With  large  additions  :  Em* 
bracing  the  Elements  of  Mythology,  Astronomy,  Architecture 
Heraldry,  etc.,  adapted  for  Schools  in  the  United  States,  by  Mrr 
Julia  Lawrence.  EmbelHshed  witk  Nui-jnerous  Engra\ings  oi 
Wood.  Fourth  American  Edition,  Revised  and  Corrected,  with  $ 
Chapter  on  the  American  Constitution  by  RICHMAL  MANGNALL 
12mo,  396  pages. 

Mangnairs  Questions  has  attained  an  enviable  reputation  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlan 
tic  as  a  condensed  abstract  of  history,  art,  science,  and  general  information.  It  is  ir 
the  form  of  question  and  answer,  and  is  adapted  to  the  higher  classes  in  common  school? 
and  academies.  The  variety  of  subjects  embraced,  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  suitable 
text-books  relating  to  many  of  them,  much  more  of  iinding  any  single  work  that  con- 
tains them  all,  and  the  judgment  displayed  by  the  author  in  selecting  what  is  important 
and  presenting  great  facts  and  leading  principles  in  a  striking  manner  that  impressef 
them  on  the  mind,  have  gained  for  this  work  an  extensive  and  well-deserved  circula 
tion.  A  careful  revision  and  the  introduction  of  much  that  is  important  to  the 
American  student,  enhance  the  value  of  the  present  edition.  An  idea  may  be  formed 
of  the  extensive  and  important  ground  it  eovers  from  the  following  table  of 
CONTENTS. 
A  short  View  of  Scripture  History,  from 
the  Creation  to  the  Eeturn  of  the  Jews. 


Questions  from  the  Early  Ages  to  the 
time  of  Julius  Caesar. 

Miscellaneous  Questions  in  Grecian 
History. 

Miscellaneous  Questions  in  General 
History — chiefly  Ancient. 

Questions  containing  a  Sketch  of  the 
most  remarkable  Events  from  the  Chris- 
tian Era  to  the  close  of  the  Eighteenth 
Centiiry. 

Miscellaneous  Questions  in  Eoman  His- 
tory. 

Questions  in  English  History,  from  the 
Invasion  of  Ctesar  to  the  Eeformation. 

Continuation  of  Questions  in  English 
History,  from  the  Eeformation  to  the 
Present  Time. 

Abstract  of  Early  British  History. 

Abstract  of  English  Eeigns  from  the 
Conquest. 

Abstract  of  the  Scottish  Eeigns. 


Abstract  of  the  French  Eeigns,  from 
Pharamond  to  Philip  I. 

Continuation  of  the  French  Eeigns,  from 
Louis  VI.  to  Louis  Philippe. 

Questions  relating  to  the  History  of 
America,  from  its  Discovery  to  the  Pres- 
ent Time. 

Abstract  of  Eoman  Kings  and  most  dis- 
tinguished Heroes. 

Abstract  of  the  most  celebrated  Grecians. 

Of  Heathen  Mythology  in  General. 

Abstract  of  the  Heathen  Mythology. 

The  Elements  of  Astronomy. 

Explanation  of  a  few  Astronomical 
Terms. 

List  of  Constellations. 

Questions  on  Common  Subjects, 

Questions  on  Architecture. 

Questions  on  Heraldry. 

Explanation  of  such  Latin  Words  and 
Phrases  as  are  seldom  Englished. 

Questions  on  the  History  of  the  Middle 
Ages. 


B.  APPLETON  6:  CO:S  PV PLICATIONS. 


The  Child's  First  History  of  Rome. 

By  Miss  E.  M.  SEWELL.    18mo,  255  pages. 

In  the  preparation  of  this  work  for  the  use  of  children,  the  authoress  has 
drawn  her  material  from  the  most  reliable  sources,  and  incorporated  them 
into  a  narrative  at  once  imostentatious,  perspicuous,  and  graphic,  ahnmg  to 
be  understood  by  those  for  whom  she  writes,  and  to  impress  deeply  and 
permanently  on  their  minds  the  facts  successively  presented.  The  entire 
work  is  clothed  in  a  style  at  once  pleasing  and  intelligible  to  the  juvenile 
mind ;  and  the  introduction  of  interesting  episodes  tends  to  rivet  the  atten- 
tion and  relieve  the  difficulty  of  memorizing  dry  details. 

Small  as  this  volume  is,  it  covers  the  whole  ground,  from  the  founding 
of  the  city  to  its  destruction  by  the  Xorthem  barbarians.  A  condensed 
sketch  of  the  manners  and  mode  of  life  of  the  ancient  Romans  is  appended ; 
as,  also,  are  Questions,  for  the  convenience  of  those  who  desire  them. 

A  First  History  of  Greece. 

By  Miss  E.  M.  SEWELL.    18mo,  358  pages. 

This  work  is  designed  to  give  the  young  a  clearer  idea  of  Grecian  History 
than  is  to  be  obtained  from  any  of  the  numerous  works  on  the  subject  that 
have  been  accumulating  during  the  present  century.  By  culluig  out  promi- 
aent  characters  and  events,  presenting  them  in  a  striking  light,  and  not 
making  their  perusal  irksome  by  a  mass  of  minor  details,  the  authoress  has 
rendered  an  important  service  to  the  youth  of  our  country.  With  the  view 
of  removing  the  difficulty  often  encountered  in  the  study  of  Grecian  History, 
in  consequence  of  its  involving  events  connected  with  numerous  places,  the 
names  of  which  are  new  and  the  position  of  which  is  unknown,  a  list  of  the 
Grecian  States  and  their  chief  cities  is  presented  in  a  preliminary  chapter. 
k.  Chronological  Table  of  the  contemporary  events  of  Grecian  and  Jewish 
History  is  appended,  which  will  be  of  use  to  the  Bible  student  as  well  as 
the  general  reader.  Few  books  wiU  be  found  more  acceptable  in  the  school- 
room than  this. 


D.  APPLET  ON  &  CO:S  PUBLICATIONS. 


History  of  Rome. 

By  Dr.  THOMAS  ARNOLD.    Three  Yolumes  in  One.    8vo,  670  pages. 

Arnold's  History  of  Rome  is  a  well-known  standard,  no  less  full  and 
accurate  than  the  works  of  Niebuhr  and  Schmitz,  while  it  far  surpasses  them 
in  interest.  The  style  is  such  as  the  subject  requires, — easy,  perspicuous, 
dignified,  and  eloquent.  Every  page  glows  with  that  truth-loving  spirit  for 
which  Dr.  Arnold  was  distinguished.  With  him  nothing  is  taken  for 
granted ;  every  statement  is  verified  by  reference  to  the  old  historians. 
The  clear-sighted  judgment  of  the  author  and  his  profound  acquirements  as 
a  philologist  and  critic,  preeminently  quaUfy  him  for  deahng  with  ancient 
records,  in  which  truth  and  fable  are  so  blended  that  it  is  often  exceedingly 
difficult  to  distinguish  them.  No  proper  opportunity  is  lost  of  introducing 
sage  reflections  on  morals  and  poUtics,  and  suggesting  themes  of  useful 
thought  to  the  intelligent  mind. 

As  this  history  is  destined  to  remain  a  standard  for  years,  it  should  have 
a  place  in  every  private  and  public  hbrary.  Its  adaptation  to  the  wants  of 
high-schools  and  colleges  will  be  apparent  on  the  most  cursory  examination. 

Lectures  on  Modern  History. 

By  Dr.  THOilAS  ARNOLD.    Large  12mo,  428  pages. 

In  these  Lectures,  Dr.  Arnold,  confessedly  one  of  the  best  of  modem 
historians,  has  presented  his  views  on  the  subject  of  history  and  its  uses ; 
the  difficulties  a  student  is  likely  to  encounter,  and  the  best  mode  of  sur- 
mounting them.  His  object  is  to  awaken  an  interest  in  historical  studies, 
and  furnish  the  learner  with  such  general  information  as  will  enable  him  to 
pursue  his  course  to  the  best  advantage. 

The  present  is  a  reprint  of  the  second  London  edition.  It  is  accompa- 
nied with  a  Preface  and  Notes  by  Henry  Reed,  M.A.,  Professor  of  English 
Literature  in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  who  has  had  in  view  its  use, 
not  only  for  general  reading,  but  also  as  a  text-book  for  collegiate  classes. 

jPVowl  the  Courier  and  Enquirer. 
"  Professor  Eeed  has  added  ^eatly  to  the  worth  and  interest  of  the  volume,  by  ap- 
pending to  each  Lecture  such  extracts  from  Dr.  Arnold's  other  -n-ritings  as  would  more 
fully  illustrate  its  prominent  points.  The  jSTotes  and  Appendix  -which  he  has  thus 
furnished  are  exceedingly  valuable.  No  student  or  literary  man  who  has  the  least 
regard  for  the  philosophy  of  history  should  be  without  this  book.  So  far  as  our 
knowledge  extends,  there  is  no  other  before  the  public  which  can  be  compared  to  it  for 
Interest  and  permanent  worth." 


D.  AFFLETON  &  CO:S  FUBLICATIONS. 


PUTZ'S  GEOGEAPHIOAL  AND  HISTOEIGAL  SEEIES. 

I.  Ancient  Geography  and  History. 

ISmo,  396  pages. 

This  work  was  originally  prepared  by  Wilhelm  Piitz,  an  eminent  German 
scholar,  translated  and  edited  in  England  by  the  Rev.  T,  K.  Arnold,  and  is 
now  revised  and  introduced  to  the  American  pubHc  in  a  well-written  preface, 
by  Mr.  George  W.  Greene,  Teacher  of  Modern  Languages  in  Brown  Uni- 
versity. 

As  a  Text-Book  on  Ancient  History  for  colleges  and  advanced  academies, 
this  volume  is  believed  to  be  one  of  the  best  compends  published. 

II.  Mediaeval  Geography  and  History. 

Translated  by  Rev.  R.  B.  PAUL,  M.A.  12mo,  211  pages. 
The  characteristics  of  this  volume  are  precision,  condensation,  and 
luminous  arrangement.  It  is  precisely  what  it  pretends  to  be — a  manual,  a 
sure  and  conscientious  guide  for  the  student  through  the  crooks  and  tangles 
of  Mediaeval  History.  All  the  great  principles  of  this  extensive  period  are 
carefully  laid  down,  and  the  most  important  facts  skilfully  grouped  around 
them. 

III.  Manual  of  Modern  Geography  and 

History. 

Translated  by  Rev.  R.  B.  PAUL,  M.A.  12mo,  836  pages. 
This  volume  completes  the  Series  of  the  author's  works  on  Geography 
and  History.  Every  important  fact  of  the  period,  comprehensive  as  it  is 
both  in  Geography  and  History,  is  presented  in  a  concise,  yet  clear  and 
connected  manner,  so  as  to  be  of  value,  not  only  as  a  text-book  for  students, 
but  to  the  general  reader  for  reference.  Although  the  facts  are  greatly 
condensed,  as  of  necessity  they  must  be,  yet  they  are  presented  with  so 
much  distinctness  as  to  produce  a  fixed  impression  on  the  mind.  It  is  also 
reliable  as  the  work  of  an  indefatigable  German  scholar,  for  correct  infor- 
mation relating  to  the  progress  and  changes  of  States  and  nations,  literature, 
the  sciences  and  the  arts,  and  all  that  combines  in  modern  civilization. 


D.  AFPLETON  iSc  CO: 8  PUBLICATIONS. 


Manual  of  Ancient  and  Modern  History. 

By  W.  C.  Taylor,  LL.  D.,  M.  R.  A.  S.    Revised  by  C.  S.  Henry.  D.  D. 
1  vol.,  8vo,  8V0  pages. 

ANCIENT  HISTOET,  Separately,  858  pages. 
Containing  the  Political  History,  Geographical  Position,  and  Social  State 
of  the  principal  Nations  of  Antiquity,  carefully  digested  from  the  ancient 
writers,  and  illustrated  by  the  discoveries  of  modern  scholars  and  travellers. 

MODEEN  HISTOET,  Sepakatelt,  812  pages. 
Containing  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  the  principal  European  Nations,  their 
Political  History,  and  the  changes  in  their  Social  Condition ;  with  a  History 
of  the  Colonies  founded  by  Europeans. 

Inquiry  is  often  made  by  those  who  have  not  the  time  or  opportunity  for 
an  extended  course  of  historical  reading,  for  a  work  that  embraces  within 
reasonable  compass  the  leading  events  of  Ancient  and  Modern  History,  and 
will  give  them  a  correct  idea  of  its  leading  features  stripped  of  unimport- 
ant details.  Such  a  work  will  be  found  in  this  compilation  of  Dr.  Taylor. 
With  the  view  of  bringing  a  general  knowledge  of  the  past  within  the  reach 
of  all  classes  of  readers,  he  has  selected  the  great  facts  connected  with  the 
rise  and  progress  of  nations,  their  customs,  religion,  and  pohtical  institutions, 
and  carefully  digested  them  in  a  clear  and  comprehensive  summary. 

For  the  purposes  for  which  it  is  designed,  it  is  believed  that  this  work 
has  no  equal.  It  is  this  conviction  on  the  part  of  those  who  have  examined 
it,  that  has  led  to  its  extensive  introduction  as  a  text-book  into  the  academies 
and  collegies  of  our  land.  Some  of  its  distinguishing  features  are  mentioned 
below. 

In  presenting  facts,  the  author  has  not  overlooked  the  philosophy  of 
history,  but  has  traced  events  to  their  causes,  and  directed  attention  to  the 
progress  of  civilization  and  its  eflPects  on  society.  Thus  exhibited  in  their 
connection,  as  parts  of  the  great  plan  of  Providence  in  the  government  of 
the  world,  events  are  understood  as  well  as  remembered,  and  the  reader 
receives  a  no  less  valuable  lesson  in  philosophy  than  in  history. 

A  knowledge  of  its  cHmate,  natural  features,  towns  and  cities,  is  often 
essential  to  the  proper  understanding  of  a  country's  history.  To  meet  this 
want,  a  brief  geographical  outline  is  in  every  case  prefixed.  The  accentu- 
ation of  proper  names,  -as  they  occur,  is  another  feature  of  great  practical 
value. 

Dryness  is  generally  characteristic  of  condensed  historical  outlines ;  in 
the  present  case  it  is  avoided  by  the  vigorous  style  of  the  author,  and  the 
introduction  of  interesting  anecdotes  and  episodes  that  serve  to  relieve  the 
mind,  and  bring  out  in  clear  light  the  pecuHarities  of  individual  or  national 
character. 

The  American  edition  has  been  revised  throughout  by  Dr.  Henry,  and 
enlarged  by  the  introduction  of  an  admirable  chapter  on  American  Historv. 


D.  APPLET  ON  &  CO:S  PUBLICATIONS. 


A  Digest  of  the  Laws,  Customs,  Manners, 
and  Institutions  of  the  Ancient  and 
Modern  Nations. 

By  Thomas  Dew,  late  President  of  the  College  of  William  and  Mary. 
8yo,  662  pages. 

On  examination,  it  will  be  found  that  more  than  ordinary  labor  has  been 
expended  upon  this  work,  and  that  the  author  has  proceeded  upon  higher 
principles  and  has  had  higher  aims  in  view  than  historical  compilers  ordi- 
narily propose  to  themselves.  Instead  of  being  a  mere  catalogue  of  events, 
chronologically  arranged,  it  is  a  careful,  laborious,  and  instructive  digest  of 
the  laws,  customs,  manners,  institutions,  and  civilization  of  Ancient  and 
Modern  Nations.  That  it  is  thus  enabled  to  give  a  clearer  and  fairer  idea 
of  the  past  and  its  relations  to  the  present,  does  not  admit  of  a  moment's 
doubt. 

No  pains  have  been  spared  by  the  author  to  secure  accuracy  in  facts  and 
figures ;  and  in  doubtful  cases  references  are  given  in  parentheses,  so  that 
the  student  can  readily  satisfy  himself  by  going  to  original  sources.  The 
department  of  Modern  History,  too  often  neglected  in  works  of  this  kind,  has 
received  special  care  and  attention. 

From  John  J.  Owen,  Professor  in  New  York  Free  Academy. 

"  I  have  examined,  with  much  pleasure,  Prof.  Dew's  Digest  of  the  Laws,  Manners, 
Customs,  &c.,  of  Ancient  and  Modern  Nations.  It  furnishes  a  desideratum  in  the  study 
of  history  which  I  have  long  desired  to  see.  The  manner  in  which  history  is  generally 
studied  in  our  institutions  of  learning  is,  in  my  judgment,  very  defective.  The  great 
central  points  or  epochs  of  history  are  not  made  to  stand  out  with  sufficient  prominence. 
Events  of  minor  importance  are  made  to  embarrass  the  memory  by  the  confused 
method  of  their  presentation  to  the  mind.  History  is  studied  by  pages,  and  not  by 
subjects.  In  the  wilderness  of  events  through  which  the  student  is  groping  his  way, 
he  soon  becomes  lost  and  perplexed.  The  past  is  as  obscure  as  the  future.  His  lesson 
soon  becomes  an  irksome  task.  The  memory  is  wearied  with  the  monotonous  task  of 
striving  to  retain  the  multitudinous  events  of  each  daily  lesson. 

"This  evil  appears  to  be  remedied  in  a  great  degree  by  Prof.  Dew's  admirable 
arrangement.  Around  the  great  points  of  history  he  has  grouped  those  of  subordinate 
Importance.  Each  section  is  introduced  by  a  caption,  in  which  the  subject  is  briefly 
stated,  and  so  as  to  be  easily  remembered.  Thus  the  student  having  mastered  the 
leading  events,  will  find  little  or  no  difficulty  in  treasuring  up  the  minor  points  in  their 
order  and  connection.  I  trust  the  book  will  be  adopted  in  our  higher  institutions  of 
learning.   I  greatly  prefer  it  to  any  history  for  the  use  of  schools  which  I  have  seen." 


